


as many names as snow

by greywash



Series: The Good Morrow [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (care of turifer), Advent, Aging, Alcoholism, All kinds of explicit sex, Angstvent, Basically some idiot let Gins loose on the internet again, Breakups, Casual Sex, Christmas, Christmas trappings, Discussions of death, Discussions of infidelity, Explicit Sex, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Family, Fear, Fighting, Friendship, Gen, Having to get a babysitter so you can actually have married sex, Home, Injury, Irene is so tired of your crap, John is a Horndog, Loneliness, M/M, Marriage, Married Sex, Molly's hot social life, Not at all casual sex, Oh also, PTSD, Presents, Reconciliation, Responsibility, Ridiculousness in story, Ridiculousness in tags, Secular observances, Sex, Sherlock's filthy mind, Therapy, Unsafe Sex, addiction issues, discussions of illness, relationships, relationships are hard, safe sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 22:42:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 34,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty-six days, twelve characters, eight or ten storylines, four romances, three cities, two sets of rings, and a spare hot shag: a largely areligious advent calendar set in the same universe as and after "<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/324584">the sensation of falling as you just hit sleep</a>" and "<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/346149">in deed accomplish our designs</a>". (Now complete!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 6: Away.

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO EVERYONE! I wrote a fic for you. ♥ Happy Seasonal Celebrations Both Religious and Secular. I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> Here is a bunch of information that I think will make you enjoying it more likely. (Because this note is a million years long, it will not be repeated on later chapters.)
> 
>  **Universe** : This is part of "[The Good Morrow](http://archiveofourown.org/series/15409)". There are a lot of cross-references between all the stories in this universe, but I had hoped to have at least two and ideally three of the other stories posted before this one went up, and that didn't happen, because I've been spectacularly blocked on this universe and also grad school. However, it actually shouldn't matter what order you read this universe in after "[in deed accomplish our designs](http://archiveofourown.org/works/346149)", as long as you are willing to assume that pairings mentioned herein constitute established relationships. (If you haven't read "[the sensation of falling as you just hit sleep](http://archiveofourown.org/works/324584)" and "[in deed accomplish our designs](http://archiveofourown.org/works/346149)", this will unfortunately not make a whole lot of sense.) 
> 
> **Chronology** : This fic is intended to be a sequence of largely independent vignettes, read in a non-linear fashion (i.e. chronologically by posting time). It should, however, also make perfect sense if you read it linearly (chronologically by story time), though of course I will be less able to gently hoodwink you if you read it that way _first_. It is totally up to you how you read it: the chapters will be posted in the order I would like you to read them now that the whole thing is posted, and now that it's done I've added in links between each chapter so that you can read chronologically by story time, if you would prefer. If you read in posting order, every chapter has a date and time at the top, which is the time that chapter begins (in-story local time, since not all of the chapters occur in the same place), and there is one chapter associated with every day between December 1 and December 26, so if you want to kind of try to assemble the story puzzle-style as we go along, you should be able to do so.
> 
>  **Pairings and rating** : While a lot of this story is gen or gennish, _please mind the pairing tags._ I am 100% serious about the pairing tags, and if there are pairings in there that squick you, you probably won't enjoy this story all that much. While not every chapter earns the rating, every tagged pairing (eventually) _does_.
> 
>  **Warnings** : **No warnings for this fic** ; my full warnings policy is in my [profile](http://greywash.dreamwidth.org/profile#warnings), and as always, if you have specific content concerns, you are always welcome and encouraged to [email me](mailto:greywash@gmail.com).
> 
>  **Cite your references, Gins (APA format optional)**: The title is via [a not-wholly-factually-accurate but nonetheless very charming quote from Margaret Atwood](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/margaretat387475.html).
> 
>  **Thank-yous** : Massive, massive thank-yous to the tireless team of betas+Britpicker who have agreed to help me get this one out the door even through this very annoying and busy holiday season: **airynothing** , **breathedout** , **roane** , and **torakowalski**. If this makes any sense at all, it's because of them. If it doesn't, well. That's all on me. ♥
> 
> Happy holidays,  
>  Gins / greywash
> 
> *
> 
> The in-story chronological links are now up and hopefully functioning. They are the smaller text beginning with "Next" or "Previous" at the beginning and end of each chapter and scattered throughout Ch. 25. You can navigate the in-story chronology through them either by time ("Next: Day") or by character name.
> 
> You can start in-story-chronology browsing from **[1 December 2012 : Fire](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1049827)**.

[ **Previous** : [Day (5th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1064639) | [John (5th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1064639) ]

_6 December 2012, 1:48 am_   
_Los Angeles, CA_

When Sherlock gets back, John is asleep, a compact lump under the blankets. He's left the light on in the bathroom, the door open a sliver to cast weak yellow-green fluorescent light out into the entryway. Sherlock sets his laptop bag in the chair by the door and peels off his jacket. He hangs it up. He hangs up his trousers, too, and balls up his shirt in the laundry bag and arranges his shoes side by side. He can sleep in his pants; the hotel room's windows are bolted shut, and even with the fan on, it's stuffy. He goes into the bathroom and cleans his teeth.

When Sherlock switches off the bathroom light, John stirs. Sherlock can't see him, but he can hear him: John's first great snuffling sort of breath as he wakes, the scrape of the sheets against his skin as he rolls over.

"Hi," John says, voice rough, and Sherlock scrambles over. John is already reaching for him, his blunt fingers pressed to Sherlock's belly and ribs and throat and face and face and face. Sherlock keeps trying to lick his fingers, but missing. Sherlock adores John. "You—have you been drinking?" John asks. He sounds amused.

"The mark drinks whiskey," Sherlock explains, and then sighs, and then tucks his face down in against John's neck, which smells lovely.

John rubs his back. "You all right?"

Sherlock waves a hand. "Not my thing," he reminds John.

"No, I know." John's hands feel nice.

"I'm not really drunk," Sherlock explains, settling in. "He's just—large, and sort of—he drinks whiskey. Dangerous, whiskey. Awfully strong for the volume."

"Yep." John's voice is already slowing down, drawing Sherlock under. "Sometimes I drink whiskey."

"You drink beer," Sherlock corrects. He feels like he's melting. John's hands are, really, just. Lovely. When John touches Sherlock's spine it gets wobblier. "American beer is ghastly."

"I drink whiskey when I want to get drunk," John clarifies. "And—yes."

"Oh, well." Sherlock closes his eyes. "Tina wants us in London on the 22nd." John's hands still, so Sherlock arches his back until they start up again. "I hate jobs when you're away," Sherlock explains.

"I'm not away," John murmurs.

"During the day," Sherlock clarifies. "I hate jobs when you're away during the day. You make me much more efficient."

John pets his hair back from his forehead. John smells nice.

After a minute, Sherlock says, "Whiskey."

"Whiskey?" John asks.

"Whiskey is efficient," Sherlock observes. "For getting drunk." He opens his mouth so John's neck is partly inside it. John is delicious.

"I see that." John's hands haven't stopped moving. "We should talk," he says, a moment later. His voice is very soft, his throat buzzing against Sherlock's mouth.

Sherlock pulls away from John's neck. "Life or death?" he asks, without opening his eyes. It isn't. If it were, John wouldn't be petting him like that.

John falls asleep for a minute, must be. Finally he says, "Not really." His voice is rough.

"In the morning," Sherlock tells him, and John nods, so Sherlock slots himself better in alongside John's body and opens his mouth and his nose and his throat and his lungs, so when he breathes in, he breathes in John's old cells. John doesn't need them anymore.

[ **Next** : [Day (7th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1047509) | [John (11th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1059354) | [Sherlock (7th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1047509) ]

 


	2. 8: Season.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (7th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1047509) | [Molly (1st)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1049827) ]

_8 December 2012, 1:28 pm_   
_London, UK_

"Good lord, Molly," Mary says, half-laughing, to the box of unwrapped presents that Molly's hauled out onto the coffee table. Mary's still struggling to get her jacket off; this far along, the pregnancy makes her strangely clumsy, off-balance, which is a fact Molly thinks, but isn't certain, that it would be tactless to mention. "How long have you been done?" Mary asks, easing herself down onto the sofa.

Molly rubs the heel of her hand over her forehead. "I'm not done," she says peevishly. "Greg, still."

"I bought my mum a scarf in May but now I can't find it," Mary says. "And that's it. I hate Christmas shopping."

Molly's mobile buzzes, so she digs it out. "Ana and Becky want to meet us," she says. "Becky's still hungover, so Ana thinks we ought to feed her, first." She looks up at Mary. "We're not in a hurry, though—tea? I have chamomile."

"Oh, _Becky_." Mary sighs, but she settles down into the sofa cushions, so she doesn't mind. "Thanks, Mols."

Molly starts the kettle while Mary sorts through the box. "Yours isn't in there, you know," Molly says, from the kitchen. It's in her wardrobe, still; not that she thinks Mary would snoop, the very idea is ridiculous, but Molly... well. Molly likes Christmas. She likes the lights and wreaths and trees and bells and mulled wine and parties and terrible jumpers and giving presents to people she loves. She'd tried to believe in Father Christmas until she was twelve years old.

"I hope it's vodka," Mary says.

"You and George are getting the vodka for Valentine's Day," Molly corrects, and Mary laughs.

"Are you going to babysit too, then?" she asks, then laughs again when Molly feels her face scrunching up in horror. Molly has no idea what to do with children. She has less than no idea what she'd do with an _infant_.

Mary is bending back over the presents, examining a copy of _Bring Up the Bodies_. "This—who's reading Mantel?"

"Christopher," Molly says, and Mary looks up.

"Is he going to be here, then?" she asks. Her voice is light, but when Molly shrugs one shoulder, Mary looks back down at the coffee table and sets the book aside. "So... Greg," she says.

"Greg," Molly agrees, a little hopelessly. The kettle clicks, so she fills up their cups. "I hate shopping for men in the first place, and—well, I never know, at this point, what's appropriate," she explains. "It's been... not quite three months? And we're not. Serious, or anything."

Mary doesn't look up. "Have you talked about having Christmas with him?" Her voice has gone artificially light again, so Molly rolls her eyes.

"Yes, but he's lonely, Mary," she says. "His ex has the kids—he gets them on Boxing Day. He doesn't want to be trapped in that miserable flat of his while the rest of his family celebrates without him. I don't blame him."

"Who brought it up?" Mary asks, and now she does look up, her grey eyes wide and clear.

"What?" Molly laughs, nervous.

"Who brought it up?" Mary repeats. "Who asked about Christmas, you or him?"

Molly gets the milk.

" _Mols_ ," Mary says, exasperated.

"Him," Molly says, and then shifts. "He asked—first he asked about Boxing Day, because he thought I'd be with family on Christmas, but... I won't, so—"

"Molly," Mary says. "When your gentleman friend asks you to spend Boxing Day with him _and his children_ , it's serious."

Molly bends over and presses her face to the work surface. "It's not even been three months," she says, muffled.

"It's been almost three months," Mary corrects. "And—let's see if I'm remembering this correctly—the sex is—" her voice jumps up—" _rather nice_ ," followed by a humiliatingly accurate impression of Molly's nervous giggle.

"I hate your guts," Molly tells her, and Mary laughs.

[ **Next** : [Day (9th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1064029) | [Molly (14th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1084942) ]

 


	3. 10: Father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (9th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1064029) | [Mike (4th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1053874) ]

_10 December 2012, 2:24 pm_   
_London, UK_

Mondays are Mike's afternoon, not Norah's: Mondays and Wednesdays. They've both arranged their schedules around it, planning so that she can get the kids to school while he teaches morning lectures, so that he's free to pick up the girls in the afternoon and she can make her department meetings. It's practical, in part, but it also gives him some time with the girls, just them, and her some time off, just her. Mondays are _Mike's_ afternoon. Norah is thinking that Mondays are Mike's afternoon and looking at his beaming face on the screen of her buzzing mobile and her heart is pounding in her ears, because—because, no reason. She doesn't know why. It's not the first time he's called.

Norah rubs at her face and rolls her chair to the side so she can push her office door shut.

"Hi," she says, and then winces; it came out false, too bright.

Mike takes a breath. "Hullo," he says. He sounds very far away.

Norah rests her hand over her mouth. "You need me to pick up the girls," she says, and he laughs.

It's not the good sort of laugh.

"That," he says, when it's over, "is why you are my most beloved wife."

She pushes her reading glasses up, rubs at her eyes. "My psychic powers are, indeed, remarkable," she agrees.

He makes a small, affirmative noise. He doesn't laugh.

"That being why I am your _most_ beloved wife," she adds. "Beating out all of your other beloved wives."

He makes the noise again, and she rests her cheek on her palm.

"Where are you?" she asks, very softly.

Mike has to think for a minute. "Pret A Manger," he says finally.

Norah nods. He can't see her.

"I'm going to get a cab," he says. He clears his throat. "And—I think perhaps I ought to call Matthew."

"That's a good idea." She draws her cardigan around herself, crossing it over her chest, toe tapping against the leg of her desk. She needs to call the school; she doubts she'll make it before the girls are let out for the day. She was in the middle of an email to Gail; she's lost her train of thought. She'll miss a meeting. She doesn't mind the meeting, but she also has a lecture at half four; she hopes Ross will be able to cover it. Norah's canceled too frequently as it is.

"Your lecture," Mike says.

"Ross will cover it," she says. Call the school, email Gail, text Ross. She needs to remember her Milton, too; she left it on Friday, and it has all her notes. "Do you want me to stay on the phone?" she asks.

"You'd better go," he says. "I'm so sorry."

"Just get home safe," she says.

"I will," he says. "I love you."

"I love you too," she says. Always says. "Get home safe."

"Yes," he agrees.

She waits for him to ring off first. Then she packs up, locks her office, and goes.

She forgets her Milton, again.

[ **Next** : [Day (11th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1059354) | [Mike (18th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1061786) | [Norah (18th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1061786) ]

 


	4. 7: Party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (6th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830#chapter) | ['Anthea' (3rd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1057519) | [Sherlock (6th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830#chapter) ]

_7 December 2012, 5:51 pm_   
_London, UK_

In 1987, on the ninth of December, two hours before the guests were due, Sherlock had got drunk on the cooking sherry, tossed his best suit in the lake, and then set the dining room curtains on fire; through the lens of history, it seems a smallish rebellion, but it hadn't at the time. It had been surprising. Sherlock had not been, on the whole, a particularly recalcitrant child, at least not in the context of their broader family history—typically brilliant, yes; temperamental, always; but also, as a general rule, _obliging_ , a personality trait that unfortunately hadn't survived puberty—but he'd disliked their parents' Christmas parties, and 1987 was the year that that particular storm broke. The first of many. Those parties had, admittedly, never been any place for children—and, of course, not-quite-twelve fits badly on anyone.

Twenty-five years later, Mycroft is tying his tie for his own Christmas party—tradition, as it turns out, is a remarkably sticky thing—when his mobile buzzes. An unknown number: _Coming home at Christmas. I suppose you'll want to see me. This is Sherlock._

That it is Sherlock is perfectly obvious, but Mycroft can't help but admire the missive from an artistic perspective. It's good work; the simplest things get terribly muddied by elaborate double-crosses, and even Mycroft's more expert agents occasionally find themselves in difficulties over, say, wedding invitations, or giving an address for their great-aunts to send their new woolly hand-knit birthday scarves. Of course, cleverly done or no, Mycroft dislikes trusting the bodily safety of his brother to anything less than secondary and tertiary confirmation, ideally accompanied by a series of discreet photographs or—even better—video footage, so he turns his mobile in his hand and dials from memory.

"Hello, my dear," he says, when she answers. "I don't suppose you could turn up early for the party tonight, could you?"

"Request from you? Or an order from my boss?"

"Your boss, I'm afraid," he admits.

"Well then, I haven't much choice, have I?" she says cheerfully, and rings off.

She's early enough to take exception to his tie, which he accepts. Her taste is rather better than his, and she's been in Brussels for almost a month. His public façade might be suffering.

"He's perfectly all right, you know," she says, looking through his tie drawer. "I could've told you that over the phone."

"You know I worry," he says. "And you're... reassuring."

"We all know you worry. And... well, thanks; I do try." She pulls out two ties, compares them, puts away one, turns back. "Would you like me to continue to reassure you?"

"Please," he agrees, and she nods.

"At the moment, Sophia has Kevin handling face-to-face contact with John," she says. He nods; he knows. "Kevin is an excellent choice for that job, and he knows Los Angeles better than just about anyone, and if they do decide to care enough to put his face to a name, nothing they find on him will make them worry. And with Sophia in charge... you know that Sophia's better with electronic surveillance than... well, anyone but me, really."

She's perfectly matter-of-fact about it. It isn't unmerited. It's why Mycroft can't afford to keep her in just one place. Mycroft would never wish for anything to go seriously wrong in London, except for with that very small and ill-trained part of his mind that persists in thinking wistfully that it really would be rather nice, if he could have her about for more than a day or two at a time. It's the hazard of being foolish enough to form a friendship: bit unpleasant, when the individual in question is subsequently unavailable.

"Thank you," he says, as she _hm_ s over his cufflinks, then slips them free from his cuffs and drops them in the dish on top of his chest of drawers, looking for another set. Her dress is a dark, sleepy sort of a green, and it fits her bottom rather well. "I have missed you," he admits.

She glances over her shoulder at him, sharper than she usually lets him catch. He meets her eyes. After a second, he starts rolling up his loosened cuffs, and her mouth quirks. "Is Marcus not to your taste?" she asks, artistically innocent.

"Well, you have nicer legs," he says, tilting his head.

"He has _marvelous_ legs, actually," she says. "But mine do look better in heels."

"Rather unfair," he tells her, stepping towards her, "for you to keep your pool of conquests to hand by assigning them to my desk."

She dimples at him. "Why shouldn't I? You do."

He raises a finger in protest. "Unfair," he tells her. "And inaccurate."

"Well, perhaps," she concedes. She slips her hands over his shoulders, resting her thumbs just over the top of his collar. It's a blatant invitation; she knows how sensitive his throat is. "You just keep them to hand by assigning them to your little secret service."

He hums noncommittally and glances down at the carpet; it's quite clean, so he drops to his knees. "Don't muss my hair," he tells her, and then slides his hands under the hem of her skirt.

"Last order from my boss, Mycroft," she tells him, eyebrow raised.

"That one was just a request, my dear," he says, easing her skirt up above her hips. She's wearing stockings, not tights, and plain black knickers. The fine peachy hairs on her thighs gleam by lamplight. "I would very much like to taste you, except that I'm concerned for the future of my shirt, and seeing as how you've just replaced my tie..."

She laughs at him and leans back against the chest of drawers, spreading her feet apart. "I certainly won't complain about your hands— _oh_." She takes a deep breath. He's hardly touching her, just resting his thumbs against the little hollows at the edges of her thighs. The crotch of her knickers is already damp, a little. He slips his fingertips just under the elastic to pet at her soft hair. It's still pleasing. Mycroft hasn't ever understood the prevailing fascination with extensive waxing; he likes that she doesn't appear to understand it, either. He rubs at the velvety edges of her, wriggles his fingers through her hair, meets damp.

"Dry spell?" he asks. His voice has dropped, but remains even. He inhales carefully, smelling her.

"Useless boyfriend," she admits, then adds, "Utterly over, don't _stop_ ," so he presses his three fingers inside her, deep and sudden. She moans, arching against him. She does always like that. She likes it when he takes her that way, too, thrusting inside her all in a rush before he returns his fingers to her fingers on her body, swollen and slick. He glances up at the clock.

"You ought to let me screen them," he says, and turns his hand, awkward, so he can get his thumb inside the elastic of her knickers. She's wet, but not like she will be. He keeps his fingers as still as he can and brushes his thumb against her, feather-light, so she kicks off her shoes, one at a time.

He smiles up at her. "Bit unsteady?" he asks.

"You're a bad person," she tells him, smiling. Her face is already a little flushed. "You ought to keep going."

He brushes his thumb over her again, and again, and again. She is swelling to meet him, wetter and wetter. "I would screen them, you know," he says. She makes a little noise, so he presses down, just a little, and she gasps. "I've been told I do a rather good impression of a terrifying individual," he says, "if you'd like me to ask them their intentions," and she digs her hand into his hair, shameless, and pulls his head back.

Her cheeks are bright red, now. "The last thing I need," she says, "is for them to be _less_ committed to debauchery."

He smiles up at her. "Well, I am aware that debauchery is a deep and abiding interest of yours," he says and curls his fingers, rubbing against her inside and out.

"Christ," she gasps, and slides her stockinged feet apart.

"Tell me," he coaxes, pressing his thumb against her, slow. Her hips are moving in small, restless jerks.

"Oh, you know." She makes a grousing sort of a noise, deep in her throat, and Mycroft strokes inside her apologetically. "Had any number of opinions on my vibrator, none the good kind; aimed for my tonsils instead of anything useful when he fucked me."

Mycroft aims his fingers for something useful, and presses down with his thumb, and she clenches hard around him, dropping her head down towards her chest, hand tightening in his hair.

"Went down on me like he was doing me a special favor," she adds, very low, and he... well. He's only human.

"I think," he says musingly, "that you should do me a special favor, and sit on my face—since you've already ruined my hair."

She laughs.

"Unfasten my tie, would you?" he says.

"I'm going to make us late to the party," she says, "and it's _your_ party," but she's already unfastening his tie.

"Marcus will handle them." Mycroft bends in to kiss her through fabric, then eases his fingers out so he can pull her knickers down.

"I've missed you," she says, and he says, "You'd better help me off with my shirt as well, my dear, if we want it to remain anything like fit for company."

[ **Next** : [Day (8th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1040361) | ['Anthea' (16th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1090117) | [Mycroft (15th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1087946) | [Sherlock (13th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1051931) ]

 


	5. 1: Fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

_1 December 2012, 1:09 pm_   
_London, UK_

Molly rocks her weight forward one last time, pressing her fists into the back of the sofa, and Greg pets up her back, his chest heaving.

"You," he gasps, admiring, and she laughs, and rocks again, just enough to make herself shiver, biting her lip. It's—a bit too much, really, so Greg makes a warning noise, and she reaches beneath herself to pinch the base of the condom, easing herself up. Her hair keeps sticking to her back and Greg's crotch is wet all over, just from her. She pads off towards the bathroom to bin the condom, and Greg admires the sweat sheen on her arse and her legs as she goes.

She leans out long enough to toss him a damp flannel, which smacks into his hand, then ducks back into the bathroom—to wipe herself off, presumably, rather more thoroughly than Greg ever bothers to. Molly's always a bit particular about that. Greg's had other girlfriends who were as well, but usually out of some kind of ill-concealed self-consciousness, which... well. Molly's a doctor—in the usual course of things she seems to find her body much less embarrassing than Greg finds his own—but she's also... well, _tidy_. It makes a certain amount of sense: her flat is not large; if she weren't tidy, she wouldn't be able to walk to the bedroom.

He cleans himself up and puts on his pants and vest and sets the rest of their clothing on the coffee table, then pads over to the bathroom doorway and leans against the jamb. She's still totally naked, one foot on the edge of the washbasin, and she's wiping a wet flannel over her leg. It's a hell of a view.

"Want me to let the cat out?" he asks. "I put your clothes up on the coffee table."

"Thanks," she says, and smiles at him in the mirror, then drops the flannel in the washbasin and drops her foot to the floor and squeezes past him. Not at all self-conscious. He gives her hips a pat.

Toby is meowing plaintively in her bedroom. Not loud, just persistent. "There, puss," Greg says, when he opens the door, but Toby just bolts for his usual perch on the bookshelf, still complaining. Greg follows him into the living room. Molly's sitting cross-legged on the sofa in her knickers and t-shirt, no bra, and regarding her mobile with some intensity. Her hair is frizzing out all over the place.

"Work?" he asks, coming over to sit next to her.

"No," she says. "My brother."

He looks at her, surprised, and she tosses her mobile onto the heap of her jeans. "Oh, well," she says, and he puts his arm around her, so she leans against his side. He could stretch out, and she would follow; it sounds nice, so he does. She drapes herself over him and rests her head on his collarbone, then closes her eyes. He can see the tops of her eyelashes. His feet are hanging off the end of the sofa. The grey light from outside just barely filters through Molly's filmy curtains.

He likes this. It's nice. If there were a fire instead of the telly, it'd even be cozy, but neither of them has a fireplace. The fireplace is in his old house. His wife's house. He prefers Molly's flat: she keeps a stack of gruesome true crime books on her bedside table and a very ugly vomit-pink faux fur throw on the end of her sofa, and her cat's favorite toy is a cartoonish hand-crocheted mouse with little X's for eyes. It's lovely and homey, the sort of just-so full that could very easily topple over into cluttered without much work. "I likes this," he tells her aloud, and rubs his foot over her shin.

She hums. "Me too," she says, and wriggles in against him. She's very, very warm.

Greg kisses her forehead. After a minute, he says, "I didn't know you had a brother."

"Chris?" She shrugs. "He's not in London much, so he doesn't tend to come up. He lives in... um, Montreal, I think?"

"You're not sure?"

"He moves around quite a bit," she explains.

"Oh," he says. She doesn't sound particularly put out about it.

Against him, Molly is quiet. Her breathing is even, but she isn't asleep. Her knee is sliding in between his. Very much not asleep, then.

"I keep meaning to invite you for Boxing Day," he says, before she can get back to distracting him.

She stills, then shifts, propping herself up. "Won't you have the kids?" she asks.

"Yeah," he says. "I'd like to celebrate with you too, though." The kids will love her; in the last few years, Max's sense of humor has started to trend in a black direction Greg thinks that Molly will appreciate, and Emma's always been a firecracker.

"What about on Christmas, then?" she asks, and shifts her weight against him, and he bites his lip.

"Won't you be with family?" he asks.

"Unlikely," she says. "It's just me and Chris. A few cousins. No one close."

"Oh, right," he says, then takes a breath, grabbing her hips. She snorts; evil woman. "Christmas would be lovely," he tells her. "But I'd still like you to come on Boxing Day."

She hesitates. "I usually spend Boxing Day with Ana and Becky and that lot," she says, a little apologetically.

"Oh, right," he says, nodding. She's tensed up. He's not sure why; he likes her friends. He likes how breezy she is about them, how shamelessly she abandons him to spend time with them. It gives him room to breathe. She can't possibly think he'd object. "That's really nice," he says, tucking her hair behind her ear. "It's a good tradition." It won't go away when her friends start heading into the inevitable wave of divorces.

She nods back. She's smiling a little. "Tea?" she asks, pushing up to her feet.

"Please," he says.

Without her draped all over him, Greg is cold. He reaches for the vomit-pink faux fur throw, which is perfectly comfortable, if he closes his eyes.

[ **Next** : [Day (2nd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1055737) | [Molly (8th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1040361) | [Greg (14th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1084942) ]

 


	6. 13: Luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (12th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1075059) | [John (11th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1059354) | [Sherlock (7th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1047509) ]

_13 December 2012, 11:02 pm_   
_Los Angeles, CA_

John sits on the bed in his boxers and watches Sherlock undress. He watches Sherlock's trousers slip down to his feet. He watches Sherlock's black socks when Sherlock steps out of his puddled trousers; John can see the bones moving in his feet. John likes Sherlock's pale calves, covered in improbably pale hair; his wiry thighs and too-flat belly. His arse is still really first-rate. Sherlock's arse makes John feel lucky. John didn't actually know that it was possible to make white y-fronts sexy, six months ago. A strange thought. He watches Sherlock's hands as Sherlock hangs up his suit. John didn't know it was possible to make that sexy, either. It is.

Sherlock comes over in his pants and nothing else and puts his hands on John's shoulders.

"You have a glint in your eye," John observes.

"Why are you looking at my _eyes_?" Sherlock asks, and John laughs, while Sherlock slides his knees up alongside John's thighs on the bedspread and bumps his crotch up against John's face, like having some wanker practically poke out your eye with his cloth-covered stonker is any kind of turn on at all—though, as it turns out, it is. John nuzzles Sherlock through his pants and pets the planes of Sherlock's back and Sherlock makes pleased noises and scratches at John's scalp.

"You," Sherlock says, a little breathlessly, "could—you could suck it, if you wanted."

John does want. He always wants. It's been over a week, and John is still trying to bring it up. But—if it's just him, it's safe enough, probably; he shouldn't let Sherlock do it to him, not—not again, but he does want, he _wants_ , so he pushes at Sherlock's waistband, drags his pants down to the tops of his thighs, and puts his mouth over the head of Sherlock's cock, which is satiny and hot and salty and dark-tasting, like Sherlock's armpits, only more so. John's still not very good at this, he doesn't think. He likes it too much. He keeps wishing his mouth were bigger, or he could take Sherlock deep the way Sherlock does, like gag reflexes are things that only happen to ordinary, _boring_ people. Sherlock keeps making these breathless little noises and petting at John's head and face, with his hips jerking like he'd like nothing so much as to press John down to the bed and crouch over his face and fuck his throat raw and achy, so that tomorrow, John will have to drink chamomile tea with honey at his meeting with his local contact and, smiling against the improbable Los Angeles sunshine, claim a highly suspicious cold. Sherlock is delicious.

"Oh, oh, I—" Sherlock gasps, and then pets his thumbs over John's cheeks and jaw, just barely managing, "I want to see, I want—" so John pulls off and wraps his fist around Sherlock's spit-slick erection and pulls him off with hard, fast strokes, glancing helplessly between Sherlock's hard, flushed cock and his trembling belly and his beautiful face, until Sherlock is jerking in his hand, coming in long warm spurts over John's cheeks and jaw, one long streak that catches John's left eyebrow, eyelid, sticky in his eyelashes.

John is so hard it hurts. Sherlock is blinking down at him with his eyes dark and his cheeks flushed hot and bright and when he whispers, "I want," John can't speak, he can't, he can't say a word. He keeps thinking that he doesn't want to jinx himself. He keeps telling himself that nothing has changed, that as long as they keep on as they have been nothing will change. It isn't superstition, exactly; it's more that he has no good options. If he is in error now, he has been in error all this time; if he is in error now, he has done something unforgivable. If he isn't, he hasn't. There's no third choice. Sherlock wipes at John's sticky face with his fingertips and then puts his fingers in John's mouth and John, helpless, sucks and sucks and sucks.

"I want to taste you," Sherlock whispers, "I want to put my tongue in you."

John says, "All right."

[ **Next** : [Day (14th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1084942) | [John (19th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1076604) | [Sherlock (19th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1076604) ]

 


	7. 4: Storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (3rd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1057519) ]

_4 December 2012, 11:09 am_   
_London, UK_

"Bess," Matthew says.

"Hm?" Mike looks up.

"You're distracted," Matthew says.

It's a little bit windy. There's a tree outside the window, swishing in the breeze. Mike looks back at Matthew.

"I'm not trying to lie to you," Mike says.

"That's..." Matthew pauses. "That's an interesting statement." Matthew is young, slender, good-looking. He's wearing a grey cardigan with no buttons that looks almost exactly like the one Mike bought Norah for her birthday. Mike wonders if Matthew's gay, then immediately feels bad for thinking it.

He tugs at his own tie. "I don't know how to put all of this together in the correct order," he says, finally. "Does that get easier?"

Matthew thinks about it. "I think people worry less, after a time," he says.

Mike nods. He likes that Matthew actually thinks about questions like that, even though Mike imagines that to Matthew, they're trivial, and that Matthew answers honestly. Mike doesn't think he could handle delicacy in a therapist.

"I just," Mike says. "I have things to say, but I don't know how to do it."

"Things about the shooting?" Matthew asks.

 _The shooting_. Matthew says, _The shooting_. Mike appreciates that, too. Most people say, _The burglary_ , or, occasionally, _The incident_. Norah says, _The... July_.

"I suppose that is rather the point." Mike clears his throat. "To talk about the shooting."

Matthew spreads his hands. "You can talk about whatever you want to talk about. Whatever's on your mind."

"Right," Mike says, nodding, then smoothes his tie out, shifting. His chair creaks. Outside, one of the branches of the tree keeps brushing against the window. It's distracting. "My wife doesn't like to talk about it."

"Do you want to talk about it with your wife?" Matthew asks.

"No," Mike says immediately. "I—I don't want her to have to think about it, or see it, or—she's a poet. She has a very visual imagination."

"She was with you after," Matthew says, "when you were in hospital," and Mike swallows.

"Yeah, some." He shifts again. "Not as much as—we have kids." He spreads his hands. "The girls needed her, and I didn't want her there. I mean. I wanted her there, but I didn't. It was complicated. She was there the right amount."

Matthew waits. Mike likes that, too. Matthew is a very patient person. Mike doesn't know a lot of patient people, he's found.

"I keep thinking about the crash," Mike explains. "Isn't that crazy?"

"The crash," Matthew repeats.

"Yeah," Mike says. "I was—it was ages ago. Uni mate of mine, dreadful weather, rain coming down in sheets, we were coming back from this—anyway, he crashed his sister's car. Her girlfriend, she was sitting up front, she went through the windscreen."

"That sounds frightening," Matthew says.

"It was," Mike agrees. "I was sitting behind the driver's seat, I remember. I was half-asleep. It was terrifying. But it was also 1995."

Matthew nods. "But you're thinking about it now."

"Yeah." Mike clears his throat.

After a minute, Matthew says, "What happened to your friend's sister?"

"What?" Mike asks, then rewinds. "No, sorry—it was, it was Clara. The, um." He laughs. "Friend's sister's girlfriend. Bit of a tangential connection, I reckon, when I put it like that, but she was at medical school with us. More—more my friend's friend than mine, but I liked her. My friend's always had a way with women." Mike rubs his palms on his thighs. "She was in hospital for ages, after."

"But she survived?" Matthew asks.

"Yeah," Mike says. He nods. He remembers that he had been surprised at what blood looked like in the rain at night. He remembers being on his knees on the tarmac with John, John's grim white face.

"And you're thinking about the crash," Matthew says.

"Yeah," Mike says, and takes a breath. "I mean—I've been married for thirteen years. But I've never told Norah about the crash. I mean, when Clara and Harry had their ceremony, we went to their reception, but in thirteen years the crash just hasn't ever come up." Mike hadn't realized until the invitation came that he'd maintained more contact with Harry than with John. He'd felt bad about that, all through the reception. John was deployed and couldn't come. Clara had dyed her hair red and cut it short, and Mike barely recognized her. It was awkward.

Matthew tilts his head. "Do you think you ought to have?"

"I just feel like I'm hiding things from my wife, all of a sudden," Mike explains. "I don't—I never intended to hide it from her; it just wasn't important. But now, I—I keep thinking about it, and I want to bring it up, but... I probably should have brought it up earlier, shouldn't I?"

"Is it more important now than it was before the shooting?" Matthew asks.

"Define important." Mike waves a hand, trying to force himself to focus. "That tree is... dreadfully distracting."

Matthew turns to look. "You can turn your chair, if you like."

Mike does, so Matthew repositions his chair to face him. Mike sits back down.

"If you're thinking about the crash, that implies that it's important to you now," Matthew says.

"Right," Mike says. He nods.

"Why?"

Mike folds his hand over his mouth.

A minute later he says, "I don't believe in luck, you understand."

"All right," Matthew says agreeably.

"But I keep feeling like—like my friend is ill-omened," Mike says, and then laughs, and shakes his head. "Not terribly rational of me, is it?"

"Because of the crash?" Matthew asks.

"Well, that and... other things," Mike says, embarrassed. "He got shot in Afghanistan, and there was a—a bit of a bad situation with a mutual friend of ours, as well, and I—well. I should probably mention—it's possibly relevant—I mean, I know you can't tell, and it really _was_ an accident, I'm entirely sure of that, so." He spreads his hands.

"So?" Matthew asks patiently. Terribly patient, Matthew is.

"Well, he shot me." Mike clears his throat. "By accident."

"Oh," Matthew says. He doesn't sound surprised, which is remarkable.

"It really was an accident," Mike says. "Norah—no one knows. It's—it's rather important that that not get back to—that it not get out."

"That it not get back to Norah," Matthew translates.

"Well, yes," Mike admits, shamefaced. "She'd stop inviting him to our New Year's parties." It sounds really rather stupid, when he says it out loud.

"I think that you know," Matthew says, "that I neither can nor would repeat things you say in here, except under very specific conditions, which I don't think apply."

Mike does know. "Yes," he says. "No. I mean—yes, I know, and no, they don't apply."

"So I think his New Year's invitation is safe," Matthew says, smiling a little, and Mike laughs. "But... Mike. Most people would probably not be concerned about whether or not the person who shot them is unlucky."

Mike shakes his head. "It's not that." He doesn't know how to explain. "I keep..." He stops, takes a breath. "I keep thinking about... contagion, I suppose."

"Contagion," Matthew repeats.

Mike nods. "This is—this really _is_ crazy, and I know that," he says. He takes another breath. "But I keep thinking about these—these impacts. Of my friend's life, with other people's. Clara's, in the car, or—or H-his sister's, I reckon, when they were little kids together. Sherlock's, too." He pauses. "Mine, I suppose," he adds, embarrassed.

Matthew nods.

"And I keep wondering," Mike says, feeling a strange sort of pressure behind his ribs, "what if, what if he _is_ unlucky, what if what I am seeing is—is other people catching. Catching his bad luck, from him." He swallows. "And what if—what if now people can catch it from me."

Matthew nods slowly.

Mike rubs at his face. "I know," he says, a little thickly, "that nothing in that is even remotely rational."

"Bess," Matthew says.

"What?" Mike looks up.

"Last time, you said you were afraid to touch your little girl," Matthew says. "Bess, isn't it?"

"Yes." Mike nods.

"You've been having panic attacks," Matthew says.

"Yes," Mike says, feeling sick. "I recall." He laughs.

"About Bess," Matthew says.

Mike doesn't say anything.

"Are you afraid she'll catch your friend's bad luck from you?"

"It isn't," Mike says, very awkwardly, then stops. He takes a deep breath. "I do know that luck isn't real. And that it certainly isn't catching."

"Yes," Matthew says. The light is hitting a framed picture behind his head and bouncing back into Mike's eyes. "But there are a lot of things that people believe, even if they know they aren't true."

Mike nods. "I'm sorry," he says. "I have to move my chair again. There's a light behind you."

"All right," Matthew says agreeably. He waits for Mike to turn his chair to a different angle, then repositions his own chair to face him.

"So," Matthew says, as Mike settles back into his seat. "Bess."

Mike nods.

"I'm afraid," he admits, after a minute.

"You were shot," Matthew reminds him.

"No," Mike says, and then takes a breath. "It's—it's rather funny, I think." He smiles, which feels strange. "I'm afraid to help her. She—Katie's nine, she's—she's so independent already, takes after my mum, too, she won't—she won't even let me check her homework anymore. But Bess needs—Bess can't plait her own hair yet. She can't reach the glasses when she wants milk; I have to lift her up, practically level with the work surface, or get one and hand it down and she hates that, makes her feel like a baby, and I don't know what to do. And I—suddenly, I'm having panic attacks when I have—when I have to go to her school to pick her up, or, or help her on with her wellies when it rains, or with the glasses or her plaits or—I'm afraid I'm going to drop her, or pull her hair by accident and hurt her, or..."

He stops, swallows.

"I'm afraid I'm going to let her down," he says, and then laughs. "Isn't that funny?" He pushes up his glasses and rubs at his eyes. "I was terrified, you know, when Katie was born," he says. "But then—back then, Norah was afraid, too. It wasn't like this." He takes a breath. "It wasn't anything at all like this."

[ **Next** : [Day (5th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1064639) | [Mike (10th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1044315) ]

 


	8. 2: Dress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (1st)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1049827) ]

_2 December 2012, 1:14 pm_   
_London, UK_

Never tell a lie if you don't have to.

It's the most fundamental principle of deceit, and it's carried Irene through much worse than running into Tina Moran at Tesco on a Sunday, when Irene still feels worn out and achy and is still tired of Tina from a week of her at work. Irene glances down at Tina's basket (eggs, pasta, chicken breasts, green beans, milk, PG Tips, Hobnobs) while they chat about the eternal incompetence of the IT department and the heating on the fourth floor, which Irene swears is still broken, before detouring briefly into Irene's ostensible weekend plans. Tina is prying. Irene doesn't protest. It's harmless.

This is the part that Sherlock doesn't ever seem to understand: that sometimes the easiest role to play is yourself. It's possible it has something to do with being a Holmes, and always a Holmes; Irene's only ever occasionally been an Adler. As a result, Irene rarely assumes that people know who she is, but she's really rather particular about not assuming that they don't; she is recognized all the time, so she uses it. She makes her own redundancy actually useful. She reuses names, faces, sets of mannerisms; draws lines between the Margaret Stokes who worked as a research librarian for seven months in Johannesburg and the Margaret Stokes who sang in a youth choir in New York City for two years in the late nineties, between the Lisa Stewart who spent the last two years of her preadolescence in Manchester with the Lisa Stewart who periodically takes Management and Administration classes at CCNY. Irene Adler got a split lip and a note on her permanent record in the third grade in Chicago; she's hardly ashamed of it. Shame is both a distraction and a waste of time. In Tesco, she makes a reference to her own casual attitude towards the female of the species and enjoys it when Tina laughs; it's a promising sign. Tina laughs because she is in control. Because she knows any number of Irene's dirty little secrets. She thinks that Irene is grasping, combative, and self-satisfied; she isn't wrong.

Tina also thinks that Irene is domesticated. Irene enjoys that.

"That friend of yours," Tina says, leaving enough hanging off the end for Irene to string herself up.

"Well, I don't know if we're _friends_." Irene hesitates, then laughs. "She's a bit teed off at me at the moment."

"Right," Tina says knowingly. Good. Tina watches; best for her to think she understands what she sees. In the night Irene shouldn't've opened the door but she did, because Irene doesn't like caution, and does like dangerous people. She likes pushing back with her back pushed to the wall, likes teeth in her neck and her shoulder with a small, square hand shoving between her thighs. Irene appreciates Harry when she's angry, but she doesn't doubt for a second that Tina has been watching Harry Watson come and go. In the night, Harry's breath was rough with fury and mistrust and anger: _You lied_ , caught in her throat as she looked at her feet and tugged her shirt straight and refastened her buttons.

Irene hadn't, really, precisely. She hardly ever does.

"I'd better be going," Tina is saying, checking her watch. She wears a watch expressly for the purpose of being able to check it, which Irene, rather in spite of herself, admires. Tina shifts her basket and smiles. "Enjoy the rest of your weekend, yes?"

"Well," Irene says, smiling back. "It's the weekend. How could I not?"

[ **Next** : [Day (3rd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1057519) | [Irene (12th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1075059) | [Tina (24th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1067377) ]

 


	9. 3: Labor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the shortest section in the story. Just, you know, FYI.
> 
> (Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.)

[ **Previous** : [Day (2nd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1055737) ]

_3 December 2012, 2:30 pm_   
_Sydney, Australia_

It's not really entirely warm enough to be out on the beach today. She doesn't care. If she didn't have to check in with Mycroft in the evening, it's possible she'd never move again. Over the weekend, the heat was brutal, leaving her limp and exhausted; she'd followed her target out to the beach on Saturday afternoon with her heart melting in gratitude for a chance to strip down to something a little less businesslike, then spent two days straight covered in suntan lotion and not actually reading a paperback she found in her hotel room while watching her target angle his hips towards a succession of susceptible-looking bikini-clad girls a decade and a half younger than him. It wasn't as irritating as it ought to have been. Today, it's not irritating at all. Amazing what a proper dose of sunshine can do for her frame of mind.

Her target isn't on the beach today. He's flown out. He'll be intercepted at Heathrow; her notes are waiting in Mycroft's inbox for him to have a chance to peruse them, but she's got another thirty-six hours on the ground. She's due back in London for new orders and Mycroft's Christmas party at the weekend, and she has to remember to throw out that leftover curry (now inedibly elderly) the next time she's at her flat. All tasks for the future, she decides, and not at all her concern at the moment. It's not hot, not anymore, but it's certainly warmer than London. The paperback has turned out to be a copy of _Emma_.

She stretches out on her belly in the sun and digs her toes into the sand. _Not bad, this job_ , she thinks, and cracks open her book.

[ **Next** : [Day (4th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1053874) | ['Anthea' (7th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1047509) ]

 


	10. 11: Brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (10th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1044315) | [John (6th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830#chapter) ]

_11 December 2012, 6:42 pm_   
_London, UK_

When Harry answers (unknown number; foolish) and says "Hullo?" (there's a pause after; she ought to've known) and then John— _John_ says, "Hi, Harry," her whole world goes white and red and stretches as thin as a wire.

She takes a breath. "You've got a lot of bloody nerve," she says, very low.

John's quiet. "I'm going to be in London at Christmas," he says, finally. "I was hoping I could see you."

"Oh." She nods. "What is it, then? Has he left you, broken hearts all around, or has your little phase just passed?"

There is another long silence, in which Harry takes a moment to feel triumphant, before John says, "I never—never _once_ —said that to you." His voice is low, and very, very tired.

Harry stops. She turns off the hob under her stir-fry, and bites her lip. She wants to console him, which is awful; she's furious with him, with his completely unmerited self-righteousness and his chronic wounded dignity and his bloody self-centered paternalistic attitude towards essentially everyone on the fucking planet. But the terrible thing about having a sibling is that the accounts go back too far to ever come up with a proper reckoning of who owes whom, and Harry's never liked to feel like she might owe anyone a debt.

"Fine," she says, at last. "That may have been uncalled for."

John clears his throat. "We're coming in on the 22nd," he says, and Harry leans against her palm, flat against the work surface. "I was thinking," he adds, "that I could buy you a cup of tea. And—explain myself, perhaps, a bit."

"Well." She pauses. "I'll take the tea, I suppose." She shakes her head, hating herself a little.

"All right," he says, then takes a breath. "How are you?"

"Thirty-four days, since that's obviously what you're asking," she bites out.

He doesn't say anything for a minute. She considers all the signs: rapid switch to first person plural: check; valiant exhaustion: check; failure to rise to bait: check—so it's not over, but it probably is on the rocks. "That's good," he says finally. She rolls her eyes.

"I'm fine," she says. "My brother is a prick, but that's practically the family condition. I'm fine."

"Good," he says, with a curl of amusement. "I'm glad."

"And you," she says.

"Oh, well." He takes a breath. "Tired of hotels. Homesick." He pauses, then clears his throat. "And, you know—well. Still getting used to—to b-being bisexual, or whatever." He laughs awkwardly.

She stares up at the ceiling. "Well," she says. "My felicitations."

He laughs again, raw.

She ought to ask. She ought to ask him who else he's told, she ought to ask him how he's doing, she ought to encourage him to talk, she ought to—

"Listen," she says. "I'm awfully sorry, but I was just in the middle of making dinner—"

"Right." He takes a breath. "Yeah, of course, I—the time difference."

She wonders where he is. "I don't mean to cut you off," she says.

"Right," he says. "I didn't mean to interrupt your dinner."

"It's fine," she says, pushing up to her feet. "I'll see you at Christmas, then."

"Right," he says. "Be safe, Harry."

"You too," she says, and hangs up.

[ **Next** : [Day (12th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1075059) | [Harry (15th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1087946) | [John (13th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1051931) ]

 


	11. 18: Cooking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (17th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1094752) | [Mike (10th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1044315) | [Norah (10th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1044315) ]

_18 December 2012, 10:37 pm_   
_London, UK_

"I really appreciate your flexibility with dinner." Norah takes off her ring and untangles her bracelet from her jumper. "I ought to be able to help again once I'm done with my marking," she adds, dropping her earrings in the dish alongside them. "I don't mean to stick you in the kitchen _every_ night."

"I'm grateful, honestly," Mike says. "I've not exactly been doing my half." He sits on the edge of the bed to untie his shoes and sighs, stretching his back out in a series of alarming cracks.

She pulls off her jumper and sniffs the armpits, then hangs it inside out. "Are we judging the success or failure of our marriage mathematically, now?"

"Low blow," he murmurs, so she turns to smile at him. "Besides," he says. "I'm a fabulous cook, aren't I?"

He isn't. He makes four or five things very well, but he doesn't make anything else at all. It's only a matter of time before Katie starts complaining about the near-endless lasagna; she's probably six months away from her first foray into pre-adolescent vegetarianism, by Norah's count.

"Well, you're _my_ favorite chef," Norah says, then ducks into the bathroom to wash her face and clean her teeth.

When she comes back out, Mike's in his pajamas, duvet pulled up to his chest, glasses slipping down his nose as he reads. He smiles at her over his book, and she smiles back, sliding her ring back on before she digs out her pajamas and changes as fast as she can. It's cold. She doesn't blame him for not lingering. Lately she's seen him in the morning, sometimes, at least, his pajama top off while he finds a clean vest and shirt. His scar is red. It frightens her, but she makes herself look at it, when she can.

They're getting better, mostly. Most days, she thinks. She slips into bed and waits for Mike to take off his glasses and turn out the light.

He slides down next to her, turning onto his side and plumping his pillow up.

"Katie is asking," she says finally.

He sighs. "I'm so sorry," he says.

"God, Mike." She closes her eyes. "I wish we could talk about something other than someone being sorry."

He's quiet for a minute. "All right," he says.

"I'm just worried," she explains.

"I know," Mike says.

"She sees more than she tells us, you know," Norah says, then sighs.

"Bess too, probably," he says, very quietly.

Norah is quiet. She remembers eight and nine and ten, in patches at least; but six is hard. She doesn't remember being six at all, and Katie and Bess are so unalike that Katie is less of a guide than Norah might hope. She wonders if Mike remembers being six.

"Probably," she agrees.

He shifts. "Matthew doesn't tell me how to handle them," he says.

"Well, I'd certainly hope not," she says, a little sharp. She's almost painfully grateful for Matthew, but she still doesn't want a stranger telling them how to raise their kids.

"No, I mean." He stops. "I just don't know what to say to them."

Norah is quiet for a minute. "You don't even know what to say to me," she points out.

He takes a breath. She wonders if saying that was a mistake.

"No," he says. "I don't."

She nods. Her hair scrapes on the pillow.

"I'm working on it," he says.

"I know," she says.

Mike is silent. It's always like this, these days. It feels like they're waiting. It's tremendously frustrating. It wouldn't be so bad if there were some set date, if this were known to last seven to ten months like a cold lasts seven to ten days; instead, it seems as though it will last as long as it pleases and raze whatever it possibly can. Some days Mike is better. Some days, he isn't. He's quieter than she knows him to be and he drives faster than he used to and he's better about loud noises than he was in August but worse with crowds than he was in September, and it seems like he's colder and more distant with the girls every day. Katie, with the convoluted logic of childhood, thinks that this is somehow her fault. Norah, for her part, has never been patient, and five months is still more significant laid on top of ages six and nine.

"I know you don't want me to apologize," he says, quiet.

"Then don't," she says.

"But I do know, you know," he says, insistent. "We had an arrangement. I never meant to leave you in the lurch."

They did have an arrangement. It seems so long ago. When she was pregnant, they'd divided up the housework and potential childcare with a brutal eye towards justice; over the past nine years, their agreement has been altered and tweaked and adjusted more times than she can count, but for most of that time, it was still rigorously, almost compulsively, _fair_. It isn't, now. It's exhausting.

"If you'd done it intentionally," Norah says, in the interests of marital honesty, "I very well might be angry with you. But you didn't. And I'm not."

He slides his hand over her hip, so she scoots closer, so he can put his arm the rest of the way around her waist.

"We'll get through this," she says. "Won't we?"

"Yes," he says, very quietly. "But this still isn't what you agreed to."

She brushes her thumb over his cheek, which is warm, because he survived. It's not that she's not angry. It isn't that at all.

"Yeah," she says. "It is."

[ **Next** : [Day (19th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1076604) | [Mike (20th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1072889) | [Norah (20th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1072889) ]

 


	12. 9: Sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (8th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1040361) ]

_9 December 2012, 3:59 pm_   
_London, UK_

"Two o'clock," Paulina murmurs, over the rim of her teacup. "Blue trousers, striped shirt."

"Your two or mine, dear?" Jane stirs in a lump of sugar.

"Mine," Paulina says, so Jane turns to her left on the pretext of looking for the waitress. The young man in the blue trousers and striped shirt meets her eyes briefly, so she smiles at him and he dimples back, then turns to bend to grab his briefcase.

Jane turns back to meet Paulina's eyes.

"Is he gone?" Jane murmurs.

"Yes," Paulina says.

Jane lets her mouth quirk up.

"Thank God I've been spared this long," Paulina murmurs, "and not a second of it wasted if it brought me to that arse."

Jane snorts around her mouthful of tea, then coughs, then dabs at her mouth with her serviette.

Paulina breaks off another piece of scone. "Barcelona," she says.

"Oh, not this again." Jane sighs.

" _Barcelona_ ," Paulina insists, the lisp stronger, this time. "We'll wear sensible shoes and prey upon the generous hearts of the young. We'll eat tapas and ogle shirtless fishermen. We'll find you a handsome widower and tell him you're sixty-five."

"Are there shirtless fishermen in Barcelona?" Jane asks.

"I don't know; let's find out," Paulina says.

"My boys are coming home, Paulina," Jane reminds her, and Paulina sits back in her chair, mouth primmed up, disgusted.

" _Honestly_ ," she says. "They have no taste at all. If you had to fall in with another criminal lot—"

"They're not like Timothy," she says, a little sharp, but Paulina just plows on.

"—they at least could have the good taste to spirit you off to somewhere _warm_ ," she grumbles.

"Stay," Jane says. "Just—stay in London, just for a few weeks, you can come over for Christmas—"

"I've always hated London," Paulina says, and that. In all these years, that intonation hasn't changed. Paulina always has hated London. Jane doesn't remember the war, at least not well, but Paulina does, the difference in their ages just enough to leave something shadowy and dark in Paulina's soft, round face as she told Jane (still just little Jane Healy, twelve and adoring), _I've always hated London_ , and then added to fourteen a year at a time: fifteen as she drew twinned red crescents over her mouth with a tube of cheap lipstick, sixteen with a pair of stolen stockings, seventeen with the not-at-all-sensible heels she'd borrowed from Marianne Boyle two doors down. Jane had said, _But London's_ marvelous, and Paulina (almost adult; a stranger) had looked at her with dark contempt and told her, _You'll understand when you're older_.

They'd both been wrong, Jane thinks; at seventy-five, it's lost some of its sting.

"Stay, just for Christmas," Jane says, "please." She folds her hands over Paulina's, which are cold, and faded, and slim. "If you stay for Christmas, I'll go with you to Barcelona for the New Year," Jane adds, "and you can tell your promising widowers that I'm sixty."

Paulina's eyes are still dark and sharp. She has never had to move her mouth for Jane to be able to tell when she's laughing. "Or," Paulina says, "I could go ahead to Barcelona and start rounding up widowers. Pre-screen." She turns her hand to give Jane's a squeeze. _I've always hated London_ , she said, says, is saying. Paulina hasn't got any family other than Jane—she hasn't got anyone other than Jane at all, really; she wouldn't be here at all, if Jane weren't. London, Paulina says, hurts her bones. Somewhere warm, Paulina said, says, is saying. Miserable in December, London is.

Jane swallows the tightness in her throat and smiles, patting the back of Paulina's hand. "Or you could go ahead to Barcelona," she agrees, "and pre-screen."

[ **Next** : [Day (10th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1044315) | [Mrs. Hudson (23rd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1080365) ]

 


	13. 5: Test.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (4th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1053874) ]

_5 December 2012, 3:17 pm_   
_Los Angeles, CA_

"John?"

"Yes, hi." John stands and rubs his palms on his thighs.

The counselor smiles at him brightly, clipboard tucked against her chest, as she holds the door open. She's about twenty-five years old and she has an electric green streak in her hair and a lip piercing and a bright, enthusiastic smile. "I'm Maia," she says. "Second door on the left."

"Nice to meet you," he says, and goes where she's pointing. It's a tiny little cubbyhole of an office. There's a scale in one corner and a 3D model of the female reproductive system on the desk, which makes John feel strangely at home. He sits on the wrong side of the desk and she sits on the other.

"So I know you have an appointment for STI screening," she says, scooting her chair in. "Did they tell you you'd be scheduled to meet with me as well?"

"Yes," he says.

"Oh, good." She smiles. "They don't remember to, always, and sometimes people are in a hurry."

"Well," John says, and then stops, and shakes his head, half-laughing. "Sorry, I'm not from around here."

"No, I gathered," she says, laughing too. She's got a smattering of freckles over her nose, olive skin, brown eyes. She's... well, _cute_. She's not quite old enough to be pretty.

John spreads his hands. "I usually have my own doctor do this," he says, a little bit awkwardly. "But—well, I'm. Due. And not at home."

She nods. "So you have received testing before," she says.

"Yes," he says. "I try to... every six months, usually, but it's been closer to a year." He clears his throat. "I was busy," he explains. "In June." He clears his throat again. "I should probably mention that I'm a doctor, by training. So."

She makes a note, nodding. "The counseling is still required for our purposes," she says.

"That's fine," he says, and then laughs. "I'm just. Letting you know."

She nods. "You said you get tested regularly," she says.

"Yes," he says.

"Have you ever been diagnosed with an STI?" she asks.

"No," he says.

"Anything you're specifically worried about at the moment?" she asks.

"No," he says.

"No symptoms?" she asks.

"No, just." He smiles. "Being careful."

She nods. "How's your health in general?" she asks.

He spreads his hands. "Fine," he says, then adds, somewhat perversely, "I've been getting a lot of exercise."

Her eyes crinkle up. "So you do have a partner at the moment?"

"Yes," John says, and then laughs, because it seems like she wants him to.

"How long have you been together?"

John clears his throat. "Um... about five months."

"Do you practice safe sex?" she asks.

"Yes," he says. He drums his fingers on the arm of his chair.

John knows perfectly well how important it is to keep your voice even in these sorts of situations, but it's still startling how clinical she sounds when she says, "For any kind of genital, oral to genital or anal, or anal to genital contact?"

"Yes," he says. It comes out fine. Normal. Good. Fine.

"Every time?" she says.

"Yeah," he says, and then clears his throat. "But."

She watches him.

He shifts in his chair. Finally he says, "I need to get tested, and I... need to figure out what our risks would be if we... weren't."

"Are you and your partner trying to get pregnant?" she says.

John licks his lips. "Ah—no." He can feel his face heating up. "I'm gay," he says.

She nods. "It's best to keep using protection," she says, "unless you have a specific reason that makes it impractical."

John nods. "It's just, we're getting married," he explains.

"Your partner's been tested?" she asks.

John clears his throat. "He—um. He... wasn't. Um." He doesn't know why he feels so awkward about this; he doesn't know this girl. He'll never see her again. He takes a breath. "His sexual experience," he says, finally, "is almost entirely with me."

" _Almost_ entirely?" she asks.

While he's still trying to figure out how to answer, she asks, "And he's never used IV drugs?"

"No," John says quickly. That one, he was ready for. He meets her eyes.

She doesn't look sympathetic, or judgmental, or anything. She's just watching him.

"Listen," she says. "I think you know what I'm going to say."

He nods.

She says it anyway: "There's no such thing as sex that's perfectly safe, but it's a _lot_ safer if you're using protection."

"If we're both tested, then," John says.

She nods. "Even if he gets tested and it comes back perfectly normal, even if you get tested and it comes back perfectly normal, there's still a risk. And any kind of non-monogamous contact would increase your risk with each other."

"We're monogamous," John says. "That's... very much not an issue."

She taps her pen on her clipboard. "I know this is hard to think about," she says, finally, "but no one who sits in that chair and tells me they're monogamous and means it thinks their partner will cheat on them, but it does happen."

John laughs.

She looks at him, eyebrow raised.

"I'm sorry." He spreads his hands. "It's just. Please believe me when I say that him cheating is _definitely_ not an issue."

"What about you?" she asks.

"What?"

"If him cheating is definitely not an issue," she says, "is you cheating an issue?"

"I wouldn't cheat on him," he says, a little sharply. "Not—do you say this crap to every gay bloke who comes in?"

"I say this crap to every person who comes in," she says.

John can feel his jaw clenching. He doesn't know what to say.

She gives him a small, sympathetic sort of a smile. "No one who sits in that chair and tells me they're monogamous and means it thinks they'll cheat on their partner, but that happens, too."

John remains silent. He feels—he feels _cold_. He wouldn't cheat on Sherlock. He's sure of it. Absolutely certain. It's not even a question. They're not—whatever is between them allows no room for other people, is all-consuming, incinerating. Together they are wired for each other and each other alone. John's never cheated on a partner, ever, and he's not about to start with Sherlock; it would be... terrible. And unfair. Cheating would be _impossible_ for Sherlock, he knows that.

Except...

Except that the ways in which it would be impossible for Sherlock are the ways in which he and Sherlock are not alike, aren't they?

It's possible that someone—Sherlock, for example—might see some gaps in that particular chain of logic.

"As soon as you stop using protection," Maia is saying, very gently, "being really straightforward about this stuff with each other isn't just a matter of emotional honesty, it's a matter of your health and potentially your lives."

John nods. "I would tell him," he says. His heart is pounding. He feels—he feels sick. "If—if I did that." John takes a breath. "I would never put his health at risk, ever." He takes another breath. "Please believe me."

She spreads her hands. "That really doesn't enter into it," she says. "I just want to make sure you've thought about all the implications."

He nods. He needs to see Sherlock. Right away. But Sherlock isn't here, so John needs to—he needs to go.

"I have," he says. "I am. I—I actually am in a bit of a hurry, can we do the testing now, or—"

"I need you to sign a consent form," she says, pulling a piece of paper out from the stack on her clipboard. "This says that—"

John nods and nods and nods and signs the form. She gives him her card and four informative pamphlets and then hands him off to a lab tech who takes his blood and makes him piss in a cup and then hands him off to a receptionist who charges him an exorbitant amount of money, which he pays in cash; makes him sign three more forms; and then sends him on his merry way, with half a dead tree in glossy paper stuffed into the inside pocket of his jacket, which he doesn't put on. Sherlock's taken their rental car out to his office of the moment; it isn't that John minds public transport so much as it is that Los Angeles's public transport is vast and illogical and _hot_ , the sun direct and too-bright, heating up the pavement and reflecting off the sides of the buildings until John can't at all believe it's December. John shoves up the sleeves of his shirt and rubs sweat off his face and waits for the bus with an eye out for a cab, traffic roaring past and his heart hammering in his ears. His mobile is quiescent in the pocket of his jeans, all through the wait and the ride back to their hotel, which takes him an hour longer than it ought, because he spends twenty minutes on the wrong bus.

When he gets back to the hotel room he hangs up his jacket, and then, heart pounding, he gathers up all his glossy informational pamphlets, his receipt, all of his copies of the forms. He takes them out of the room and tears them up and stuffs them into the bin by the lift, four floors down. The only thing he keeps is the card with the phone number to call for his results and his ID number, hand printed with the receptionist's blue pen. That, he hides in his wallet.

[ **Next** : [Day (6th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830#chapter) | [John (6th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830#chapter) ]

 


	14. 24: Mistletoe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (23)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1080365) | [Sherlock (21st)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1091407) | [Tina (2nd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1055737) ]

_24 December 2012, 11:33 pm_   
_London, UK_

The office is quiet, very nearly empty. Special projects only, this late; even Andre has gone home.

Tina leans against the doorjamb of Sherlock's office. It's Jessica's office, really, but Sherlock is borrowing it for the duration. He's staring at his computer with grim—and not very believable—intensity; she wonders if he thinks she can't tell when he's lying to her.

"I can hardly believe you're still here," she says, light, and he looks up.

"You did summon me from the other side of the globe," he says. "Pardon me for assuming this assignment was important."

She leans her hip against the doorjamb and crosses her arms over her chest. "Maybe," she says, smiling, "I just wanted to see you."

Sherlock's face grows thunderous, and she laughs.

"Honestly," Tina says, pleased, "you're so _easy_."

"Did you want something?" Sherlock grits out. His long hands are splayed out on his desk, arms tense. He's not wearing that stupid ring—he hasn't in months, of course, but tonight he's rubbing at the place where it ought to be. _Idiot_ , she thinks, with affection. They must've eaten him alive, at school, at uni; if his body were any louder it would be screaming.

"Go _home_ ," Tina tells him, simultaneously exasperated and very, very fond. She wonders, not for the first time, how on earth he manages to muddle along with another person; if he's even aware how many rules he's breaking. Maybe John doesn't care. She wouldn't rule it out; every now and again, John almost surprises her.

"I'm not finished," Sherlock is saying, but his mouth is twisted up and unhappy.

"Go home anyway," she says, and comes over to perch on his side of his desk. His nostrils flare. "Look," she says, crossing her ankles. "It'll be Christmas by the time you get back—that seems like the sort of thing John would care about."

"Don't talk about him," he says.

He says it too fast. His words trip over each other. He gets to the end and has to suck in a breath, his face and neck flushing and his eyes huge and pale when he glances up at her face. He looks furious, and desperate, and hurt.

 _They're fighting_. The realization comes fast and sharp, and then, hard on its heels, another: _He isn't pulling away._

He should be pulling away. He always does, when she gets this close. He doesn't like to share lifts with her; crosses his legs like a barrier in front of him when they sit in facing chairs and never, ever lets her come up behind him. He puts a desk between them, when he can, as though a woman of her size and general distaste for the more... personally applied forms of persuasion is any kind of threat to a man like him at all. For the first time, she wonders which of them he doesn't trust.

She smiles down at him. She watches his throat move as he swallows.

"Am I being too hard on you?" she asks, very softly. "I don't mean to be." His hands are still splayed on the desk. He has his sleeves rolled up. He has such lovely, lovely forearms.

She rests her palm on his wrist.

"What are you doing," he says. It doesn't quite come out as a question. He isn't pulling away.

She smiles at him. "If I'd planned ahead, I would've brought a sprig of mistletoe," she says. She thinks it's probably best to be clear.

He is still looking up at her, steady. His eyes are dilated. She brushes her palm up over his arm. He still doesn't move.

"Should I stop?" she asks, curious.

"Tina," Sherlock says, low.

[ **Next** : [Day (25th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974) | [Sherlock (25th - 12:37 am)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#john1) | [Tina (25th - 6:39 pm)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#tina) ]

 


	15. 22: Children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.
> 
> (Also, um, probably no one but me cares, but lest you end up reading this in a week amid torrential rains and wondering what I was smoking while writing this, it is, at the moment, forecast to be mostly sunny in London on the 22nd. These are the things I check, okay. /o\\)

[ **Previous** : [Day (21st)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1091407) | [Greg (14th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1084942) ]

_22 December 2012, 11:04 am_   
_London, UK_

"Emma!" Greg shifts the shopping bag to his other hand. He _knew_ he should've made Emma leave the shop for last. "Don't get so far ahead, all right?"

Max is trailing sullenly behind him. Emma stands by the railing and watches them impatiently, but she doesn't run further ahead. She has her old stuffed tiger under her coat, Greg knows; she's getting old enough to be embarrassed to have it seen in public, but not old enough to like to leave it behind.

"Good girl," Greg says, when they catch up. He reaches over to ruffle her hair and she pulls away.

"Dad," she says. "You're slow. I want to see the pygmy hippopo—hippopot—the hippos."

"All right with you?" Greg asks Max. Max shrugs, and Greg bites back a sigh. "Hippos it is, then."

Emma is a hippo enthusiast—an animal enthusiast, really; she's already given them lectures on gorillas, penguins, and tigers—and she needs very little help from the placards surrounding the pygmy hippo enclosure to inform them extensively regarding their habitat, diet, and behavior—"They spend six hours a day foraging for food, Dad!"—while bouncing excitedly on her toes. Max keeps his hands stuffed in his pockets and is silent. It's a bright enough day, if chilly, but Max might as well have a black stormcloud hovering over his head.

"What's next, sweetheart?" Greg asks, when Emma seems to have finally exhausted her supply of hippo facts. She screws up her face and he passes her the map, so she can make an informed decision.

"Anything in particular you want to see?" Greg asks Max.

Max shrugs.

"Right," Greg says. "Of course not."

"I don't even want to _be_ here," Max grumbles.

"You didn't have an opinion," Greg says, very quietly. "Your sister wanted to come to the zoo, so we came to the zoo. Next time, please feel free to share your suggestions before we make plans."

Max hunches his shoulders up and jerks himself away, stomping off back towards the gorillas, his skinny back vanishing into the crowd.

"All right, come on, Emma." Greg shifts the shopping bag again and grabs her hand, dragging her off after Max.

"We've already seen the gorillas!" Emma protests.

"I know, but we've got to catch up with your brother," Greg says, scrambling ahead.

"Dad!"

He's going too fast. He can see Max's brown head slipping further and further away. Emma can't keep up. Greg slows, and then stops.

"Does Max have his mobile with him?" Greg asks.

"Yeah, he keeps texting when he thinks you're not looking," she says. "I want to see the wallabies."

Greg pulls out his phone. _Don't leave on your own. Meet by exit._

Max doesn't reply. Greg takes Emma to see the wallabies. Max is fourteen; he's hardly still a little boy who couldn't be trusted out of his parents' sight, but it still makes Greg uncomfortable. He just doesn't think there's a better option. He's unwilling to ruin things for Emma just because Max is in a strop; Max, lately, is usually in a strop. He takes Emma to see the wallabies, then the reptile house. By then it's lunchtime, which he thinks he can use as an excuse to retrieve her brother.

Max is near the milkshake bar, hood pulled up, texting furiously. He tenses when Greg and Emma come up, but doesn't look up.

"Lunch?" Greg asks.

"Not hungry," Max mumbles, then hunches his shoulders together, probably realizing that this statement is stupid. Max is always hungry.

"Well, _I'm_ hungry," Emma says. "Can't we go back to Animal Adventure? They had food up there. And meerkats, for after."

"Are you going to eat the meerkats?" Greg asks.

She wrinkles up her nose. "Ew, Dad."

"Are you sure?" he asks. "Not even for dessert?"

She scoffs. "They have _fur_. Come on!"

She tromps off back into the zoo, and Greg looks at Max.

"We're going to go with her, and we're going to get some lunch, and we're going to look at the meerkats," Greg says quietly. "And you're going to pretend you care about your sister's feelings for another few hours, and then you can pick what we do next weekend. All right?"

Max lifts his chin. "Is your girlfriend coming next weekend?"

"What?" Greg stares at him, blindsided.

" _Molly_ ," Max snaps. "The twenty-something slag—"

"She's thirty-three and you sound like a tosser." Max shakes his head, laughing, and steps back, but Greg grabs his arm. "I'm not going to stand for you talking about a woman like that, Max," he says, very quietly. "Not for any reason. I taught you better than that."

"She didn't wait very long to dive in though, did she," Max says, low and angry.

Greg stares at him. He can't—it's the one thing he and Vanessa agree on; it's not the kids' fight, it's not the kids' business, but without going into the gruesome details, Greg doesn't have any idea what to say to that.

"It's not true, it's none of your business, and it's rude," Greg says, finally, and Max sneers and yanks his arm free.

"Dad!" Emma is calling, scrambling back over. "Come on, you're so _slow_ , why aren't you coming? Come _on_."

She takes his hand and pulls him back towards the heart of the zoo. Max follows, silent, a step behind.

[ **Next** : [Day (23rd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1080365) | [Greg (25th - 10:34 am)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#greg) ]

 


	16. 20: Presents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (19th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1076604) | [Mike (18th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1061786) | [Norah (18th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1061786) ]

_20 December 2012, 3:51 pm_   
_London, UK_

The front door clicks when it shuts. Norah's footsteps are heavy. Just Norah, sounds like. Mike frowns and looks up from the carrots.

"The girls?" Mike asks.

"With my mum." Norah sets her handbag on the bookcase and fishes out her mobile, plugs it in. "Come upstairs with me."

Mike sets the knife down.

Norah leans her weight on her palm on the doorjamb.

"It's four in the afternoon," he says.

"The girls are at my mum's," Norah says. "Come upstairs with me."

Mike pushes his glasses up. "You're serious," he says.

"As a heart attack," she says. "Come up—"

"We haven't, not in months," he says.

"I know," she says, "all the more reason," and steps towards him, and puts her hand on his cheek, then her mouth on his mouth.

He puts his hand on her side and she hooks her finger in his loosened tie and pulls. "Yeah?" he mumbles.

"Yeah." She pulls. She hates the scar, he knows, but he yanks his tie off anyway; his shirt, still mostly buttoned. She touches his chest through his vest and then under it and he stumbles with her towards the doorway but misses. She braces her hand on the table behind her and he pulls off his vest with his heart in his throat. She touches him: north, southeast, then center. The scar doesn't feel like every other bit of his skin but she's touching him and she's shaking and he loves her. He lifts her skirt up and touches her through her tights. _Secondary school all over again_ , he thinks, and then laughs.

"You're very particular," she says, a little snappishly, "for a man—"

"No, not you, not laughing at you, my love." He kisses her, again, and again, and again.

"I want you inside me right away," she says. She sounds unhappy. He presses down through her tights, harder and harder, until she is panting with it. He hasn't had a proper erection in three weeks; he took care of it in the shower. Sometimes she masturbates in bed and he pretends to be asleep. She's touching his chest and she wants him to be inside her so he pulls her tights down and pushes her skirt up and puts a finger inside her and wiggles it about and she pulls on his hair.

"Don't be a tit," she says, then, anxiously, "do you not want—"

"I want, I want to fuck you blue," he says, laughing, and she smiles at him and bites his lips and he still has his trousers fastened but that can be undone. His belt clanks and all the coins in his pocket fall all over the floor.

"Whoops," he says, and she laughs into his mouth and kicks him in the knee while they're trying to get her tights off. He doesn't care. She wraps her long legs around him and he nudges his prick against her, rubbing the head over her labia and her clit and her arsehole and just over the rim of her until she's panting with it, tugging him in with a heel to his back as he pushes inside her. "Oh," he hears (his voice, whispering), "oh, God, you're—" and she leans her weight back against the table and pushes down hard against him and yes, _Christ_ , he—

"Well, come _on_ , then," she grinds out, impatient, pushing against him, so he grabs her thighs and spreads her wider and fucks up into her, tightwethot, all his, her hips rolling to his hips and his balls slapping against her arse. She's got a hand up her jumper, her long fingers working under her bra, and her cheeks are flushed pink while she rolls her other hand flat against herself stretched tight around him. His glasses are slipping down his nose and her breath is starting to catch and the table is rattling. He feels like cheering. He leans forward and fucks her harder, hard enough that she gasps and the sweat runs down his temples and he wants to make her scream, he wants to make her scream like she used to in the flat in Chiswick where they lived when they were first married, where the windows leaked and the upstairs neighbor improvised terrible jazz on a Casio with the volume turned up on the built-in speakers and, in retaliation, Norah would ride Mike and improvise lines from terrible porno, not bothering to whisper: her eyes wide, her old-lady reading glasses pulled down to the tip of her nose as she gasped and squeaked and moaned, _Please, I need it, I need your thick cock inside me_ , until it stopped being a game. He wants to make her scream, he wants—he wants to feel her come, almost can; can feel that first hard jerk of her body around him, just at the edge of her control; he tries to not go harder or faster or anything, just for a moment, if he can just _hold on_ , while she moans— _tight_ —her ring and her bracelet clattering on the table as she braces herself, pushing down— _Christ_ —and then she groans loud enough that he feels it all over, all around him, again, and again, and again.

"You want me to finish inside you?" he asks, breathless, "or on the floor; we need to mop anyway," and she giggles and squeezes all around him and says, "Come, come on, Mike," so he bends to press messy-damp kisses to her throat and the soft-salty skin under her open collar and her jaw while she digs her fingers into his hair and wraps her legs tighter and tighter around his waist. She kisses his eyebrow when he comes; he wraps his arms around her skinny body and holds her tight. Tighter.

His eyes are closed. He isn't letting go; neither is she.

After a while he asks, "Does this mean we're done with the semi-secret wanking?"

She snorts, then laughs, her ribs jerking against his chest. He pulls back. Mike's glasses are askew, badly smudged, and Norah looks really rather sheepish. Her knickers and tights are on the floor and his trousers and pants are around his ankles; it's just occurring to him that it's possible that wasn't the most sanitary use of the table where they eat their family dinners. He can feel himself getting hot and red all over.

"Well," she says, reaching out to tidy up his hair. "Maybe we could be done with the secret part, at least?"

He licks his lips. "I think I want to put my clothes back on," he admits.

Her mouth twitches, then pulls down.

"Oh, well, if you insist," she says, almost light.

He swallows and nods. He pulls up his y-fronts and trousers and hands her her knickers, but he leaves the tights. She hates wearing tights in the first place; wouldn't, if she thought she could get away with going without. She slides down off the table and straightens her jumper out. Her cheeks are still pink. Mike stops with his vest over his head and one arm but not the other and wraps an arm around her waist. He kisses her on the ear, and she bows her head.

"I miss you," she explains, "when you leave me behind."

"Not behind." He kisses her again. "Outside while I wank in the shower, maybe," he admits, and she laughs, and he kisses her throat.

She sighs, and tilts her head to the side. It gives him more to kiss, so he does.

"I don't mean to," he explains, after a moment. "You just seem so far away. Not—we, _we_ seem far away."

She rubs at her nose with the wrist of her jumper, then pushes her hair out of her face. She isn't looking at him. He lets go of her waist, and she swings away like a pendulum, bare heel squeaking against the floor. He pulls his vest the rest of the way on. He uses the hem to polish his glasses, then does up his belt.

"Do you remember," he says, bending to pick his shirt up, "that bloke with the Casio, in Chiswick?"

She meets his eyes. She nods.

"I have fond memories of Chiswick," he says.

She's quiet. He doesn't know what else to say. He puts on his shirt. He puts his tie and her tights on the table; they can hardly leave them on the floor. "I got a recipe for chicken stew off the internet," he says, going into the kitchen to wash his hands. "It sounded like it'd be good as leftovers."

She nods. She comes over to the sink and puts one hand on his back, just above his left kidney, and he breathes in, deep. He turns the taps off and she reaches around him for the sponge.

"For the table," she explains, and he nods. She's so close to him. She has little freckles, always has; wrinkles, many of them new. Bess got Norah's eyes. Mike tucks Norah's hair behind her ear, and she curls the sponge into her hand and nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose with her knuckle. His throat hurts, and he looks away.

"Mike," she says. He looks back.

"You need me," he says, and she smiles. He closes his eyes and kisses her.

"I need you," she agrees, "I need your thick cock inside me."

[ **Next** : [Day (21st)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1091407) | [Mike (25th - 4:43 am)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#mike) | [Norah (25th - 4:43 am)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#mike) ]

 


	17. 12: Mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (11th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1059354) | [Irene (2nd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1055737) ]

_12 December 2012, 7:14 pm_   
_London, UK_

Irene sips a takeaway cup of cheap, dreadful coffee and lets her mind drift. She surveys the departures board. Randomness is critical, and difficult: very few things that real people do manage to be truly random. At least she has plenty of options: Hertford North, Stevenage, Aberdeen, Welwyn Garden City, Leeds... Ah, Leeds. Grantham will do. She doesn't want to spend her _entire_ evening on the train. She turns her iPhone off, then buys a ticket for Doncaster (careful, Irene) and heads to Platform 7. She keeps her collar up and her head down.

She's not being followed—she's known how to spot a tail for twenty years, thank you—but she still moves her seat twice. It doesn't do to be careless. She gets off at Grantham and walks around looking in windows for twenty minutes before dropping into a pub and smiling at a likely-looking lad who, clever thing, turns out to live rather nearby. He's wearing a tie. She drugs him before he's even got it loosened and then drags him over to the bed, wrestles him up onto the duvet and leaves him there in a lanky and barely-post-adolescent sprawl.

First: gloves. Second: locks. Third: surveillance. She does it systematically, carefully; sweeping mechanically all around the frame of the door and all over the coat rack, every little nook and cranny in his minuscule and slightly dusty kitchen, his dusty bookshelves, the backs of his dusty bookshelves, all around and on top of and behind the (very dusty) telly. She checks the baseboards and the line where they meet the carpet. She checks every fixture and crack in the loo, the inside of the cistern; she takes up all the cushions of his narrow little loveseat; she lifts every piece of furniture she can shift and feels under the rest. She strokes her gloved fingers around the base of his lamps and on both sides, inside and out, of his windowsills. Nothing. There's nothing. She's safe. They're safe.

Once, while bored on a ferry, Irene had tried to work out the odds of selecting a random flat in a random city and accidentally hitting upon one surveilled by some covert organization or another, but she had to make too many assumptions in the calculation to trust the numbers as any kind of real security. How many young men wearing ties in Grantham are of interest to powerful people? It's an imponderable. It also doesn't matter. This one—Brian, or Brett, or something—isn't being watched. She can be sure of that. She was careful; she checked. His flat is too cluttered, though. He ought to redecorate. Her gloves are smudged with dirt, and the flat took her long enough to search that she'll almost certainly have to drug Brad (Bernard?) again before she goes.

She locks herself in the loo and checks her watch. Thirty-nine minutes. She opens her handbag. She pulls out a new SIM and the Nokia. She pops the SIM in and waits for the Nokia to power up. She wishes she'd thought to bring a book; she has Angry Birds on her iPhone, but that really doesn't do her any good. She absolutely loathes GPS. The Nokia comes on; three bars. She checks her watch again. Forty-one minutes, now. The dose is usually good for two hours, but she never likes to count on more than ninety minutes. It isn't that there's anything to be done about it. She just hates being rushed.

Forty-two minutes, now. She's wasting time. She dials: one, nine seven three, five five five oh two nine eight. She hits call.

She sits on the lid of the toilet seat as it rings. She takes a sip from the bottled water in her handbag. Her throat gets dry when she travels. Achy.

The line connects, and she hears, "Hello?"

It sounds like fifty years of cigarettes and Jersey gravel. Irene doesn't get homesick, but she does miss that. "Hi," she says, brushing the back of her glove over her eyes. "Hi. It's me, Ma."

[ **Next** : [Day (13th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1051931) | [Irene (17th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1094752) ]

 


	18. 19: Fight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (18th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1061786) | [John (13th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1051931) | [Sherlock (13th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1051931) ]

_19 December 2012, 7:51 am_   
_Los Angeles, CA_

Sherlock is—

 _Cranky_ , Molly supplies, at the back of his mind. _Overtired. Ah_ —he can almost see her cheeks flush— _frustrated_.

Irene would be less generous, most likely.

"I'm sexually frustrated," Sherlock calls, to his reflection. It's steaming over again. He wipes at the mirror, then goes back to his jaw.

Behind him, the shower turns off. "What?" John says, muffled.

"I'm sexually frustrated," Sherlock repeats.

"...you can't be sexually frustrated," John says. "We had sex—"

"Six days ago," Sherlock says, as John says, "—yesterday."

Sherlock looks down long enough to rinse the razor, and the shower curtain rattles open. John grabs the towel nearest the shower—his spot; he's shorter—and rubs it over his hair. His skin is pink with the heat from the water. He is not erect, not yet. Sherlock could change that.

Sherlock shaves another line up under his jaw, careful. "You seem remarkably reluctant for me to touch you in any meaningful fashion," he says, as evenly as he can.

John's hand stills on his hair. He meets Sherlock's eyes in the mirror. "What do you mean, _any meaningful fashion_ ," he says, low.

Sherlock keeps shaving. "Thursday," he says. "Something about Thursday. I can't work out what, though."

"What do you mean by _any meaningful fashion_?" John repeats louder, and Sherlock puts the razor down.

"Yesterday I wanted to suck you, I wanted—I wanted you in my mouth; you didn't, you wanted—you wanted—"

"Your hands," John says, low, "I love your hands, I—"

"Yes, fine, you wanted a handjob so I gave you a handjob and the day before that you wanted me to fuck your thighs so I fucked your thighs while you wanked and the day before that—well, we were working, weren't we, on Saturday and Sunday, so we barely touched at all, and—"

"It's nothing out of the ordinary!" John snaps, and Sherlock looks down into the washbasin.

"Six days," Sherlock says, low. "I'm worrying that I don't remember what you taste like and I can't stand it, and six days _is_ out of the ordinary, for us, but it has been six days and on Friday, we weren't working. On Friday we weren't working and we were going to and then somehow you moved and I ended up—"

"Did you not like it?" John asks. His voice is low and breathless.

"I want to know what changed on Thursday," Sherlock says.

"You didn't like it," John manages. He sounds hurt. Sherlock is hurt.

"I'm hurt," Sherlock tells him, "I liked it," and John leans back against the wall and folds his hands over his face.

"I always like it," Sherlock says, after a minute. "I don't mean—I don't know how to ask." Sherlock hunches his shoulders up. "I don't know how to ask you this question," he says. His throat is full of sharp edges. "How do I ask?"

John stays quiet.

After a minute, Sherlock picks his razor up again.

"Like this," John says, very quietly. "You ask like this."

Sherlock exhales and nods. At least his hands don't shake too much for him to finish shaving.

"I'm sorry," John says, finally. "Christ, I'm a bastard. Sorry. Jesus." He sighs, rubbing at his face.

"I just want to know," Sherlock says, very quietly. "It's—why Thursday? Nothing was different about Thursday. It's driving me mad."

John looks like he almost wants to laugh, but remains confused about whether or not he should. "You're—this is a case," he says.

"Oh, don't fish for compliments," Sherlock says, a little more snappishly than intended, and John lifts his chin, the muscle over the joint twitching. Sherlock bends to rinse his face and says, "I want to suck you off right where you are, so you can see your face in the mirror."

Behind him, John is quiet. His breathing's gone a little funny. He's half-hard, Sherlock knows, even without looking in the mirror to check. Sherlock looks in the mirror to check. He licks his lips. He can still taste the shaving foam, so he bends down to rinse his face again.

"It wasn't Thursday," John says, quietly. "It was—the week before. Wednesday. After that... since then, I—I've been trying to bring it up, and I was trying. Not to." He clears his throat. "I've been trying not to have sex with you for a fortnight."

Sherlock pauses in the middle of drying his face. "You're bad at it," he says, finally.

"Yes, well, have you looked in a mirror," John says. He sounds defeated.

Sherlock turns, leaning back against the edge of the washbasin to watch him. "You still haven't explained why," Sherlock observes. The marble is cold against his arse.

John licks his lips. "I got tested," he says, finally. "I'm waiting for my results."

Sherlock frowns. It's just like it is in the moment just before he solves a case, when he knows that he can see all the pieces, but it still doesn't, quite, make sense.

"Tested," he echoes. "On what?"

[ **Next** : [Day (20th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1072889) | [John (21st)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1091407) | [Sherlock (21st)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1091407) ]

 


	19. 23: Family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (22nd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1070318) | [John (21st)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1091407) | [Mrs. Hudson (9th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1064029) ]

_23 December 2012, 9:14 am_   
_London, UK_

After Sherlock goes in the morning, John doesn't know what to do with himself. It's bizarre; in his head, 221B looks just like it did when Harry packed him up and dragged him to her flat after he got home from Bart's, despite the fact that he hasn't lived there for over half a year, despite knowing that Mycroft had the flat packed up, despite Mycroft being well enough acquainted with Sherlock to know that he'd consider Mycroft _un_ packing his things again to be an unimaginable imposition. John is meaning to start in on the heaps of boxes, but he and Sherlock talked about swapping their beds—months ago, now—and haven't been home long enough to find the time. They really ought to do that first, if they're going to do it, and John can't manage it on his own. He doesn't entirely know what ought to go into his wardrobe, either, or into the single lonely little bookcase in his bedroom, or if he ought to just move the bookcase downstairs; he's certain that if they're to get Sherlock's bed up, the narrow and seldom-used desk in John's bedroom will need to go, but he can't for the life of him figure out _where_. There's no room. He'd unpacked the mugs yesterday, at least. That had seemed safe.

It's funny. John had remembered that his bed was a single, but he didn't remember it being quite this uncomfortable.

He ends up sitting at the table downstairs and staring out the window while feeling exhausted and inexplicably sorry for himself for precisely twenty-six minutes before he gives up and texts Mrs. Hudson. She replies almost immediately, which is how he finds himself headed down to the ground floor ostensibly for the purpose of helping her with her Christmas preparations, fixing her squeaky bathroom door, and seeing if he can't do something about that Mrs. Douglas across the street, who Mrs. Hudson _swears_ keeps putting her dog's business in Mrs. Hudson's bins; but actually, John suspects, for the purpose of getting soused with Mrs. Hudson on cooking sherry and watching terribly sentimental Christmas films.

This prediction turns out to be entirely accurate.

"I know you can't give me details," she says, as he refills her glass for a fourth time, "but... he is all right, isn't he? He's so careless, sometimes—you're looking after him?"

John's been matching her but no more; he's nowhere close to drunk enough for the way that stings at his eyes.

"I try," he manages, somehow, and then clears his throat, once, twice. He sets his sherry on the coffee table and settles down next to her on the sofa.

Mrs. Hudson pats his knee. "Is he being difficult?"

John looks up at the ceiling. "Me, really," he says, and then laughs, shamefaced.

She clucks sympathetically. "Traveling is always awfully hard," she says.

"It's not that." John swallows, then takes a deep breath and leans forward, and picks up his glass again. "Can I," he says, embarrassed, then clears his throat. "Can I ask for some advice?"

"Of course, my love." She sounds surprised.

"Because I can't." He stops, takes a breath. "I've tried with—because otherwise, I can't."

"Of course," she repeats, more gently. Her fingertips press to his wrist.

He nods and turns his palm up to take her hand. Everything in his head is a mess, cluttered and disorganized and uncomfortable. He doesn't know where to start.

He says, "We've been talking about," then stops. His throat is closing up.

"Take your time," she says softly.

He waves his free hand, frustrated. "You know," he says. "I always rather took it for granted, that I'd. You know. Marry some nice girl who wanted kids and." He swallows, shakes his head.

"John," she says. He's not sure, but he thinks she sounds surprised. He tries to remember if either of them has actually told her they're together—well, too late now.

"Harry says we aren't conventional, she and I," John says, a little too fast. "But _I_ am. I—I don't know how to interpret any of what—of what I feel like I want, under the circumstances, but I do, I do want." He shakes his head. "Forever," he says. His voice curves down. "And. All that." He takes a breath. "With him."

She squeezes his hand. "Anyone with eyes in their head could see that you love each other," she says, and he laughs.

"But that's the easy part, isn't it?" he says, turning to look at her.

She looks sad.

"I'm terrible to him, you know," John says, very quietly. "I can't—he tries." He shakes his head. "All the time," he says. "So hard. I can see—it's like I can see his... muscles working, he hasn't got any idea what he's doing, you know, but he tries so f-f—it's like dating a bloody teenager," he says, helpless. "He says. He says things that grown-ups don't say, and he _means_ them, and." John drops her hand and rubs at his eyes, which are aching. "I keep telling myself, 'Don't f—mess up, for once in your life, don't mess him up,' because he _trusts_ me, and he thinks—" John laughs— "he thinks I _do_ know what I'm doing, which is a laugh."

He flattens his hands over his face. She puts her hand on his shoulder, and he breathes. In. Out. In. The night before, between the jet lag and the narrow bed and the last remnants of the weekend's jagged edges still catching rough between them, neither of them could get to sleep. Instead, for hours, Sherlock lay curled around John's back with his fingers knotted up with John's fingers, pressed tight to John's breastbone, while John counted the seconds between Sherlock's breaths. John dozed off, eventually; it was soothing. When he woke up again it was still dark out and Sherlock was in exactly the same position, but limp and heavy, too hot as always, breath damp and slow on the nape of John's neck, and John fell back into unconsciousness like he'd been punched out. He'd slept until the alarm went off, and woke up with his mouth on Sherlock's familiar, heartbreaking mouth.

John shakes his head. "I keep wishing I really were gay," he says, and it scrapes in his throat, and he laughs, and shakes his head. " _Really_ gay, like—not at all interested in women, I wish—I wish I had been shagging boys since secondary school and could—"

He stops. He absolutely can't say, _get it up for gay porn_ , not to _Mrs. Hudson_ , but it would, he thinks, make things an awful lot clearer if he could. It's not that he hasn't tried; he has, with grim determination. Unless it's made for him by Sherlock, about Sherlock, starring Sherlock, it's just... dull. Almost nothing's changed, as it turns out; he's almost exactly the same person he was at thirty-five, and twenty, and fifteen. He isn't gay.

"I told a girl I was, you know, in Los Angeles." He shakes his head again. "She didn't have any reason to disbelieve me. It was the easiest thing in the world."

Mrs. Hudson sighs, very deeply. "I don't think marriage is ever easy, love," she says. "Mine certainly wasn't, and I've always been attracted to men." She sighs again.

"I just keep thinking," John says, very softly, "it'd be one less way that I have it in me to let him down."

[ **Next** : [Day (24th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1067377) | [John (25th - 12:37 am)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#john1) | [Mrs. Hudson (25th - 12:56 pm)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#mrshudson) ]

 


	20. 14: Mulled Wine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for further notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (13th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1051931) | [Greg (1st)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1049827) | [Molly (8th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1040361) ]

_14 December 2012, 8:33 pm_   
_London, UK_

Greg's flat smells like spices. He said something about mulled wine, but Molly wasn't paying attention. He puts his thumb under her ear, his hand folded around the back of her neck. He has big hands. His stubble scrapes her throat. When he moves to her mouth she can taste garlic and tomato sauce. He'll touch her bottom in a minute, through her jeans. He touches her bottom through her jeans. She bites his bottom lip and he groans. She's planning: they've done it on his ghastly orange sofa exactly once, which was enough; usually they're in her flat, but his was closer to the restaurant, and she's horny. He can push her against the wall or he can take her to his bedroom and beyond that, she draws the line. She puts her hand between them and pets him through his trousers. He's half-hard, breathing harder. She knows that he'll go down on her for hours if she lets him but right now she wants him to fuck her.

"Condoms?" she asks, and he makes another one of those breathy little noises and says, "Bedroom," so she pushes him back, her ballet pumps scuffing the sides of his shoes as she steers him back towards the bedroom and pushes him down on the duvet. He's already slipping his hands up her t-shirt and edging carefully up towards her breasts like she might object, which she doesn't. She twists her hands behind her and unfastens her bra, then yanks her shirt off so he can shove the cup of her bra up and put his mouth on her nipple, drawing it between his teeth and scraping, gentle. He could do it harder. She's told him. She always tells him. She usually has to tell him several times before he really lets himself go. She doesn't feel that patient tonight. She unfastens his flies and shoves everything down, and he lets go of her long enough to help. She puts her hands on his erection and he gasps, hips jerking up, and she lets him push himself through the ring of her forefinger and thumb until he's rock hard and his face is bright red and she can't stand it anymore. She pulls back and takes off her open bra, pushes down her jeans and her knickers and then goes for the drawer in his bedside table. She tears open a condom while he's still getting himself out of his vest and rolls it on him while he eases himself back onto his elbows.

"You," he says, and then groans when she climbs up on top of him and pushes herself down around him. _Fuck_.

"I'm sorry," she manages, hot all over, "but I just need you to—"

"Jesus Christ, Molly," he says, and then, " _anything_ ," and she nods and nods.

"Touch me however you want," she tells him, "I just need to feel—"

He nods and rocks up, just a hair, and she moans. Size doesn't matter, it doesn't, it _doesn't_ , except when it does and then God, it _does_. He squeezes her buttocks apart and she swears it makes him feel bigger inside her. She feels _impatient_. It doesn't make any sense; she can't be impatient for something that's happening, but she is. She bears down around him and he slides his hands up her sides and his thumbs over her breasts and she leans forward, her own weight squeezing her clitoris between them and _rubs_ and he gasps and yanks her down almost hard enough to hurt and she digs her fingers into his shoulders.

"Yeah," she gasps, "yeah, I want—" so he hisses a breath out between his teeth and pulls away from her, just a bit, so she can feel millimeters of her body magnified in their hollowness without him before he pushes back up. He always seems _impossible_ until he's actually fucking her open. If she were a different kind of woman she thinks she'd tell him, but she isn't, so she doesn't, she just slips her hand between them to push down on herself harder. Her hands are never quite enough on their own but he is moving against her inside her as the invisible strings between her areolae and her cervix get tighter and tighter. "I want to come," she tells him, frustrated. "I want, I want to come ten times, I want—" and then breaks off, gasping, as he pulls her down against him with his hands on her arse, spreading her wide, blunt fingers squeezing hard—hard enough to bruise, God, yes, she hopes so. Her face is burning. She isn't ever loud, but he _always_ is, making low, rough noises as she rides him, his hands bruisingly tight on her arse, almost as though he would like to move in opposition to her, but he doesn't. Instead he presses finger-shaped marks into her skin that she'll be able to feel tomorrow and bites his pretty-flushed lips and gives her little tiny pushes of hip past which she can do exactly and whatever she will. She feels the first wave of her orgasm like a slap—oh, almost, _almost_ , and then—there, _there_ , so she pins him back to the mattress and fucks herself through it, until she can open her eyes again and unclench her toes. He's bright red all over, staring up at her, wide-eyed. Molly is endlessly curious about what he did with his wife, if it's this easy to take him so by surprise.

"How close are you?" she asks, and he bites down on his lip, then smiles. She smacks his shoulder and he laughs.

"Aren't I allowed to be pleased that I'm an upgrade?" he asks, as she kneels up, gripping the base of the condom. He tucks his left leg underneath him and pushes himself up onto his knees. His spine cracks and he exhales, eyes fluttering, and rolls his neck. "Oh, there we go."

"Only if I'm allowed to be pleased that shagging me is apparently good for your back," she says, and he snickers and grabs for her, pulling her close, arm around the small of her back, sweaty and sticky when he pulls her to his chest. He kisses her sweetly; she sucks on his tongue.

"I think you're good for me all over," he murmurs, half into her mouth, so Molly pushes down hard on her various internal organs' disturbing tendency to flutter and twists around to get on her hands and knees. "Oh," he says, very low.

"I don't think you were finished," she says, arching her back, "you should deal with that," and he groans and grabs her hips, guiding his erection inside her.

She comes twice more before he does, in little hot, liquid bursts, then again so hard it hurts with two of his fingers inside her vagina and his thumb against her clitoris and her face pressed hot against the bed and her hair tangled up and sweaty and sticking to her neck and her face. Greg's mouth is pressed against her shoulder, shaping low, filthy words he can't bring himself to whisper in her ear; when she comes a noise squeaks out of her throat that she'd probably find embarrassing if she weren't so ecstatic; before he pulls away, he kisses her. She falls in a useless heap against his duvet and tries to remember how her limbs work. She feels bruised and raw. Her labia ache. It's delicious. She slips her fingers between her legs and comes again with a touch— _God_ , he's amazing. He should work for Ann Summers, but then she'd probably never be able to leave her flat.

"That," he says, voice rough, "is quite the view."

She exhales and rolls over onto her back, dropping her knees open. She's soaking wet, practically to her knees. She caresses the edge of her folds, spreads herself open, rubs over her clitoris. She suspects she might be embarrassed about this in the ordinary course of things, but she's much too relaxed. She opens her eyes and tucks her chin to her chest, watches him in the doorway. She strokes herself lazily and looks at his stubbly face, his hard chest and soft belly, his soft penis. She looks at his penis a lot. When attached to live people, penises are very interesting, and she very rarely gets an opportunity to observe them in... their natural habitat, as it were. By the time she gets to them, they're usually on their best behavior. They're often even already dressed for company. She only gets to see Greg unerect after he's already come, which she finds rather flattering, which—yep, that's doing it for her, so she grabs on to the thought, thinks about his soft penis, thinks about what she does to it. She thinks about going over and caressing his foreskin, drawing it back from the glans; drawing him into her mouth, maybe even uncovered (a dark and illicit thrill), sucking on less and less of him as he got harder and harder. She gasps and puts her free hand up to her breast, squeezes her nipple, and he says, "Jesus Christ," very low, and her throat catches on a noise, and another, and another—

After a minute, he comes over and lies down beside her.

"I have to wash my hands," she says breathlessly, and he laughs.

"That," he says, "was amazing."

"It can hardly be news to you that women get multiple orgasms," she says.

"Well," he says. "It's different in theory and practice."

She turns towards him. "You're kidding."

He's very pink. He doesn't say anything.

"Wait," she says, "I know it's no complaints with the equipment and I know it's not about stamina, so whatever she—"

He's tensing. He pushes up onto his elbow and then sits up.

She feels herself flush all over. "Oh my God," she says, humiliated, "Oh, God, I'm so sorry, that—that was unbelievably—I'm so sorry, I can't believe I said that."

"It's all right," he says. He hands her her knickers, and she tugs them on cringing. "Really, Molly. Slip of the tongue." He's tugging on his boxers.

"Yeah," she says, cringing, twisting down to grab her bra.

He clears his throat. "I was serious about the wine," he says, smoothing down the hem of his vest.

"What?" She yanks on her t-shirt.

"Mulled wine," he says. "You said—you like mulled wine, I've been meaning to make mulled wine. It doesn't take long. You should stay."

She hesitates, looking up at him. She feels sticky and uncomfortable. She wants to retreat. It's unfair of him, to look at her like that.

"Stay," he says, very quietly. "That was only five."

"Five," she echoes, feeling off-balance and confused, and he reaches out to pet her disastrous hair away from her face, murmuring, "You said ten. You said you wanted to come ten times."

[ **Next** : [Day (15th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1087946) | [Greg (22nd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1070318) | [Molly (25th - 10:34 am)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#greg) ]

 


	21. 15: Light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (14th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1084942) | [Harry (11th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1059354) | [Mycroft (7th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1047509) ]

_15 December 2012, 11:46 am_   
_London, UK_

Mycroft tours up one aisle and down the next, as slowly as he's able. He's carrying a basket on the crook of his arm. It makes him feel alien to himself, which is unpleasant. He reaches the end of the aisle and turns back down to his right.

"Why, Miss Watson." He smiles, showing his teeth. "Hello."

She glares at him, her hand on a tin of beans. "Mycroft." She puts the beans in her basket. "You know that I don't actually believe in coincidence, where you're concerned."

"Even I am subject to the whims of fate, my dear," he says. He doesn't really expect her to believe him; she doesn't. Instead, she rolls her eyes and strides briskly away.

In her favor: an aggressive, industrious, and rather truculent personality; in his, very nearly a foot of height. He catches up with her easily, his basket swinging from his elbow. "Having a good weekend?" he asks. A little old lady trundles down towards him, shoving a trolley at a rather alarming speed; Mycroft sidesteps her easily. He's rather getting the hang of Tesco's, he thinks, pleased.

"I sincerely hope you die violently, painfully, and, above all, _slowly_ ," she says, grabbing a jar of apricot jam.

"That's rather uncharitable," he observes.

"Oh, come off it, Mycroft," she snaps. "It's not like I don't know that you were involved. It's bad enough having my girlfriend turn out to be a plant from my brother—"

"In his defense," Mycroft says mildly, "that was very much above and beyond the call of duty, on her part."

Harry stares at him, then gives a barking sort of a laugh and shakes her head, striding off again. Foolish of her, really; she hasn't managed to outpace him yet. But John did warn him: _Watsons tend to hold grudges_ (his voice twisted and knotted around the words, dark with secrets and his unbearably tedious interpersonal angst), as though Mycroft, as a person with better-than-passable observational skills, hadn't noticed. Mycroft catches up with Harry by the dairy cabinet.

Harry slams a bottle of semi-skimmed milk into her basket with unnecessary force. "And what about you, hmm?" she asks, voice false and bright. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm doing my shopping," Mycroft says.

"Your basket is empty," Harry reminds him. "Did my brother order you to look after me?"

"No, but he's looking after mine," Mycroft says, and Harry spins towards him, fast enough that Mycroft is startled into taking a step back.

"He's _fucking_ yours," she says, very low, and Mycroft snaps his head up; but no one's close enough to hear. "Don't fool yourself into thinking he's a good Samaritan, Mycroft," Harry tells him. "John's a self-interested, self-involved, self-centered _prick_ , and the second Sherlock doesn't need him enough to make him feel like a special and beautiful snowflake—"

"Harry," Mycroft says quietly, "they're talking about getting married," and Harry's spine goes poker-straight, all the blood draining out of her face.

"He isn't," Harry says, and Mycroft inhales and straightens up.

"They are," Mycroft says.

Harry turns her head away, eyes pressed closed. She's an attractive woman: the sort of brash, high-color dark-blonde that tends to be devastating in youth but doesn't always age well; but she has. She looks tired, though. Her mouth is lined.

"He's told you?" she says, very quietly.

"No. Not yet." Mycroft tucks his hand into his trouser pocket. "But forewarned is forearmed, and all that."

Harry is quiet. "He doesn't mean it, you know," she says, after a minute. Her voice is thick and unsteady. "John's never made a decision that stuck in the whole of his life." She pushes her hair out of her face, her hands restless and clumsy. Sherlock does that, too.

Mycroft gently relieves her of her basket. "Let me buy you lunch," he says.

[ **Next** : [Day (16th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1090117) | [Harry (17th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1094752) | [Mycroft (16th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1090117) ]

 


	22. 16: God.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (15th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1087946) | ['Anthea' (7th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1047509) | [Mycroft (15th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1087946) ]

_16 December 2012, 4:24 pm_   
_London, UK_

She's better than half asleep when her doorbell buzzes. She scrunches her eyes shut, then opens them wide and stretches, transferring her book to the side table next to her wine and rolling up onto her feet. She checks the peephole, then undoes the chain and steps to the side.

"You hardly ever come around here," she says, pleased. "Special occasion?"

"I wanted to see you off." Mycroft tucks his umbrella into her stand and sheds his jacket. He's wearing a waistcoat—at four in the afternoon on a Sunday, the ridiculous man. It actually doesn't look half bad on him, of course.

She smiles at him as she bolts the door. "I'm not leaving until the morning," she says. "If I didn't know you better, I'd suspect you of an ulterior motive."

He holds up a finger. "Work first, ulterior motives second, my dear," he says, and then belies the statement by brushing her hair out of her face. "You look rather pleasantly rumpled."

"I was having a nap," she says. "Well—there was a book involved, but for the most part, I was having a nap. Wine?"

"At four in the afternoon on a Sunday?"

" _Waistcoat_ ," she retorts, and he laughs.

"If you are, then," he says, so she pads into the kitchen in her stockinged feet to fill a second glass.

"Let me guess," she says, bringing it back over to his perch on the edge of the sofa. "There's a problem with Georgiana?"

"Georgiana is nothing but a delight," Mycroft says, without inflection, and gives her the sort of smile that makes her think of a very large, angry, and possibly psychologically unstable rabbit.

"She _is_ improving, you know," she says, very gently. "I was a bit raw when you first took me on, too."

" _You_? Blasphemy, my dear." He gives her a proper smile and sips his wine. He still looks... placidly on edge, with his eyes alert but his mouth carefully and self-consciously relaxed.

She wriggles around and puts her back against the arm of the sofa, settling her feet in his lap. "Are you fretting over your brother again?" she asks. He rubs his palm over the top of her left foot, very gently, then tucks his thumb in against the sole.

"It does rather seem to be my favorite bad habit, doesn't it," he says, rueful. "I had lunch with Harry Watson yesterday."

"Oh, _honestly_." She rolls her eyes and takes a gulp of wine. "I'm not going to have to locate another support group for you, am I?"

He looks alarmed. "No, my dear, that particular threat exercised once was more than enough for me." He rubs at her arches and she sighs, melting, and closes her eyes.

"You missed your calling," she says.

"Did I?" he asks, very quietly.

The corner of her mouth tugs up, but she smoothes it out right away. "Yes," she says, as seriously as she can. "You were obviously _built_ for caretaking. I can almost see your business cards, you know: _Mycroft Holmes, Pediatrician_ — _Mycroft Holmes, Nursing Specialist_ — _Mycroft Holmes, Professional Nanny_."

This last is apparently enough to startle him into a laugh. She squints over at him, smiling, and he bends his head back over her feet, cheeks a very little bit pink. The smile slips away sooner than she'd like.

She wriggles her toes, and he rubs up over the ball of her left foot, pressing out gobs of tension and ache. "Not even you can protect everyone from everything, Mycroft," she reminds him. "You're not omnipotent—not yet, anyway."

He smiles again at that. "But not," he says, "for lack of trying."

"No," she agrees, very gently. "Not ever that."

He takes a deep breath and nods. He rubs his long fingers over her toes, and she shivers and sinks down into the sofa.

"I will miss you, you know," he murmurs. His hands are slowing. "At Christmas."

"I'll miss you too," she says, and pulls her feet away, tucks them in against the inseam of his trousers. "You're a good friend, whatever you think."

He smiles at her. She reaches up and tugs at his waistcoat until he concedes, twisting to stretch out against her on the sofa. She wriggles to make room.

"Happy Christmas, my dear." He kisses the corner of her mouth.

"Happy Christmas, Mycroft," she agrees, and kisses the tip of his nose.

[ **Next** : [Day (17th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1094752) | ['Anthea' (25th - 3:11 pm)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#anthea) | [Mycroft (25th - 9:18 am)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#mycroft) ]

 


	23. 21: Travel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera. 
> 
> There's an additional note in the chapter end notes if you like some advance warning for minor implausibilities of setting; feel free to mosey on down there if needs be.

[ **Previous** : [Day (20th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1072889) | [John (19th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1076604) | [Sherlock (19th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1076604) ]

_21 December 2012, 7:18 am_   
_Washington Dulles International Airport_

The plane taxis up to the gate and the seatbelt light dings off and Sherlock is on his feet, swinging John's bag down and into the aisle seat. "I want a cigarette," Sherlock tells him, grabbing his own bag, then elbows his way into the terminal.

It isn't that Sherlock would actually refrain from leaving the terminal if he had to, but he's saved the bother by a smoking lounge five gates down, empty except for an elaborately coiffed and manicured secondary school teacher in a skirt suit and fake Prada pumps sitting in the far corner reading a copy of _Us_ ; Sherlock catalogues her innumerable (seventeen) signs of sexual (romantic) desperation while he digs his lighter and half-empty pack out of his coat and lights up. The smoke burns all of his mucus membranes and makes his eyes water, which is wonderful; he has no idea why he ever bothered to quit. The second drag almost makes him feel like he's been awake for something less than twenty-one hours on three cups of weak aeroplane tea, a half a biscuit, and a venti six-shot cinnamon dolce frappuccino with extra whipped cream that John ordered, paid for, and then handed to Sherlock without comment in the terminal back at LAX, while Sherlock was still talking the gate attendant around to moving them to adjacent seats.

The schoolteacher's phone trills in her pocket, and she stubs her cigarette out and stands. "Shouldn't miss my flight," she says, giving him a narrow-filed smile as she stands. Sherlock stares at her; she appears to think this statement merits a response, but she's wrong. The glass door swings open and John comes in with two cups of coffee and an inevitably mediocre baked good in a Starbucks bag. John comes over and sits down next to Sherlock, passing him a cup, and the schoolteacher shrugs and leaves. The glass door bangs shut.

"You don't smoke," Sherlock says, a little more snappishly than he means to.

"Oh, are you finally getting properly angry?" John asks.

"How long are you going to keep flagellating yourself?" Sherlock asks, because _really_.

" _Not_ ," John says, "what you should be angry about."

"Well, it _is_ what I'm angry about," Sherlock snaps.

John sighs and digs around in the Starbucks bag. It crackles, which is irritating. "You're acting like you don't understand what I did," he says.

"Oh, no, I understand perfectly," Sherlock says, between drags. "I also understand that the results—"

"You're reasoning backwards," John says. "I didn't know, did I, I—"

"The fact that there was a risk couldn't possibly be news to you," Sherlock snaps, "it wasn't news to—"

John cuts him off, saying, "It made it real," which defies response, and then John's whole face shifts as he smiles up at a very young, very hungover group of students with oversized backpacks shuffling into the lounge. Sherlock hates him, sometimes. Of course then John looks back at him and Sherlock doesn't hate him anymore. The students go over to the far side and pass around a lighter, speaking Ger—no, Dutch, in low, careful tones.

"Fine," Sherlock says, voice low. "You wanted to know; now you know, and I—"

"Croissant?" John interrupts, brow thunderous.

Sherlock looks away and holds out his hand for the bag. He rips off a hunk of stale, terrible croissant and stuffs it in his mouth. "Are you done yet?" he asks, muffled.

John drops his voice. "Are we really discussing this now?"

Sherlock swallows with some difficulty. He keeps his voice pleasant. "I'd rather discuss it now; wouldn't you?"

John smiles. "I'm not actually a toddler, so—"

"You have your re—everything's fine," Sherlock says, very low, "so I don't see why you still feel the need to—"

"I know better!" John snaps, a little too loud, and Sherlock straightens, looking at the students, as John hisses, low and urgent: "I know better, I _knew_ better, I didn't—I was overdue, and even if I weren't, I never should've in the first place, _especially_ not with—I go every six months, December and June, you can't go to medical school and then live like I lived and not worry, and then the _one time_ I miss—"

One of the students says something that makes the others laugh, and John turns away, exhaling, low and ferocious. Sherlock lights another cigarette and smokes and smokes and smokes. John drinks his coffee. It takes another fifteen minutes for the students to finish smoking— _Christ_ , what do they even _do_ at university these days?—and ten on top of that for them to remove themselves from the premises, and then Sherlock stubs out his third cigarette of the morning and says, low and fast, "Realistically, I'd love to know the risks of your behavior relative to _the vast majority_ of the people on the planet—"

"You aren't the vast majority of people on the planet," John snaps back.

"Well." Sherlock laughs. "Neither are you."

"You don't—you've barely," John says, tripping; "you don't sleep around, and I do."

Sherlock's hands clench. "Did," he corrects.

"Doesn't actually make it _better_ , Sherlock," John says, throwing his empty cup into the rubbish bin. "I—you can't—I slept with five women in June."

" _God_ ," Sherlock hears, gasping. His throat is closing up. He squeezes his eyes shut tight and tries not to feel like he's been slapped.

"You want me to apologize for _that_?" John laughs, ragged. "Sometimes I want to _shake_ you."

"Please— _please_ stop," Sherlock manages. He scrubs a hand through his hair, then hunches back over his coffee cup.

John sighs. "Christ." He rubs at his face, then bins the last of the croissant, too. "Jesus. I'm sorry, Sherlock." He brushes his hand over Sherlock's shoulder. Sherlock turns in towards him, and John pets up his nape, scratches up through Sherlock's hair, and Sherlock twists the curve of his ribs around so that the inside of John's wrist brushes against his cheek.

"It was just," John says, very quietly, "it was idiotic, it was totally irresponsible." Sherlock flinches away from him, and pushes up to his feet. There's—they left a magazine, _Opzij_ , but Sherlock is hardly the target audience. He tosses it aside and turns, as John says, "Not you, _me_."

Sherlock rubs at his face. "Oh, yes," he says, raw. "Because I'm not involved at _all_."

John is silent. Sherlock stares straight ahead through the glass at the terminal coming to life; a man in a cheap suit comes into the lounge, followed closely by two girls in jeans and hooded sweatshirts. After a minute, Sherlock starts working on unclenching his jaw.

"Sherlock," John says, just barely loud enough to hear, so Sherlock comes over. John tucks his hand into Sherlock's coat pocket and pulls out his cigarettes.

Sherlock watches John light up. John takes a very half-hearted drag, the corner of his mouth twitching up as he watches Sherlock back. Sherlock stuffs his hands into his pockets, then folds himself back into the seat at John's right. John exhales, coughing a little, and settles his arm against Sherlock's.

It's a while before they're left alone with a prematurely balding man with apparently not-entirely-effective noise-canceling headphones blaring Beethoven while he glares at the _Washington Post_. Sherlock checks his phone.

"How long?" John asks.

"Hour and a half," Sherlock says.

John nods.

After a minute, Sherlock sighs. "This argument is idiotic," he says.

John ducks his head.

"Everything I want to say you know already," Sherlock adds.

John sighs. "No one in the entire world," he says, very quietly, "fights like you."

Sherlock waits. After a minute, he says, "Is that bad?"

"No," John says, leaning against Sherlock's arm. "It's a long way from bad."

It ought to be an apology; it's the sort of thing that usually ends up being an apology and John's voice is achy in the way that it is when he's apologizing, and yet John's spine is still curved in wrong ways. Sherlock is starting to forget what John looks like when he isn't transparently and frustratingly upset. They've been snapping at each other since _Wednesday_. Sherlock is tired of it. It ought to be fixed by now. He doesn't want this to follow them home.

Sherlock takes a deep, careful breath. "I know that you were careful," he says, carefully. "With—with your girlfriends, I know that you—"

"I wasn't always careful about everything," John interrupts.

Sherlock presses his mouth shut tight. He can almost still taste her.

"I know," Sherlock says, finally, "I didn't forget."

John nods once, sharp.

Sherlock clears his throat. "But the risk, with that," he says, and then stops, because John has bowed his head.

"It's a risk," John says, very quietly.

"It isn't a big risk," Sherlock says, and John says, "It's still a risk," low and aching and flat.

Sherlock sighs and leans back in his seat. He feels twitchy and strange. He wants another cigarette and another cup of coffee, but if he has either he thinks he'll probably be sick. He flexes his feet. "I didn't either, you know."

"What?" John asks dully.

Sherlock licks his lips. "Use protection."

"Keep your voice down," John says, but his heart's not in it. The man with the _Post_ isn't paying any attention. Sherlock sighs and slings his arm around John's shoulder, presses a kiss to his temple; John sighs and rubs his forehead against Sherlock's hideous stubble.

"Are you worried?" Sherlock asks quietly, dropping his arm. "About me?"

John looks over at him. "Always," he says, low, and Sherlock rolls his eyes.

"That isn't what I meant," he says.

John looks back dead ahead. "You didn't do anything particularly dangerous," he says, which is transparently hypocritical; John's face is twisting up like he knows it. His voice is steady, though. "Not with your—your friend."

"Nick," Sherlock says.

"Yes," John says, mouth quirking. " _Nick_."

Sherlock looks away.

"I don't know about anything else you may have done," John adds, and rubs at his eyebrow. "I mean. Later."

Ah. "No," Sherlock says.

"I mean," John says, and Sherlock says, "I know what you mean," and John says, "In the tight-jeans days," and Sherlock says, "They weren't tight, back then."

John gives him a rather pained smile, then looks away.

Sherlock licks his lips. "I was careful," he says. "I never—I was very careful. I didn't, not ever."

John nods, but doesn't say anything.

"It's just, I found the idea distinctly unappealing, at the time," Sherlock says.

"Sharing?" John asks, glancing over at him.

"Touching," Sherlock corrects, very quietly, and John sighs and settles his arm between them, palm up. Sherlock straightens, cracking out the knots in his spine, and then carefully interlaces their fingers.

After a minute, John says, "You should get tested, you know." He sounds tired.

Sherlock glances over. "We're not stopping," he says, then grimaces. It came out depressingly uncertain.

John gives him a look of patent disbelief.

"I mean." Sherlock clears his throat. "We're continuing on as we were," he says, and shifts in his seat. "Aren't we?" John hasn't bought condoms, but there's been enough conflicting secondary evidence that Sherlock is a bit nervous to think about what that means.

"Bit of a..." John licks his lips. "Closing the barn door after the horse, don't you think?"

"Yes," Sherlock agrees, "but it's not an entirely insane question, what with your new obsession with safety."

John slumps down in his chair. "I really wish you wouldn't be an ass about this," he says, very quietly.

Sherlock sighs and rubs at his eyebrow. He's getting a headache. Just the ticket to improve fifteen hours of transatlantic travel: a days-long domestic and a migraine.

"I know you're not trying to be," John says, after a minute. "But... well. Quite aside from." He stops, and takes a deep breath. "Aside from all the stuff that's... between _us_ , I'm—I'm professionally obligated to care, aren't I?" He tips his head back, but there's nothing to rest it on. The seats are too far from the wall. He turns his head to the side, rubbing at his neck.

"I really messed this up, Sherlock," John says, a little clumsily, "and I wanted to…" He swallows. "Not," he says, and then stops all at once. His voice sounds thick, as though his tongue has grown in his throat.

Sherlock swallows and nods. "I'll get tested," he says. "If it'll help."

Beside him, John breathes out, his shoulders slumping. He nods. "It would help," he says, very quietly.

"But..." Sherlock hesitates. "Would it matter?"

Beside him, John is very, very still.

"Because," Sherlock tries to explain, "for me, it wouldn't matter if," and then stops, because John is turning to look at him. His face is drawn and grey. Sherlock saw someone drown in the Thames, once. Sherlock hesitates, at sea.

"Please don't," John says quietly, "just—please don't say that; it's _you_ , I can't stand it when you don't care."

Sherlock swallows.

" _Please_ ," John says.

"All right," Sherlock says, and John exhales and closes his eyes, head tilted away. He looks exhausted. They both are. This time it isn't even anyone else's fault. Sherlock shakes his head and pushes up to his feet, and John opens his eyes.

"I'm going to get us tea," Sherlock explains, patting his pockets. "We ought to go to the gate, I can't possibly smoke another. Do you want another terrible croissant, or—"

"Sherlock," John says.

"Herbal tea," Sherlock corrects. "In deference to—"

"Sherlock," John repeats, and Sherlock is quiet. John lifts his hand, hooks it in Sherlock's trouser pocket. The fabric is thin and John is touching Sherlock's hip. It makes Sherlock want to bundle him up somewhere warm and let him sleep for a year, preferably with Sherlock. Sherlock probably could sleep for a year.

"It terrifies me," John says, without meeting his eyes, "what I could do to you."

Sherlock straightens up. John drops his hand back down into his lap.

"Tea," Sherlock says.

[ **Next** : [Day (22nd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1070318) | [John (23rd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1080365) | [Sherlock (24th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1067377) ]

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're like me, and find not-entirely-accurate details related to physical setting kind of hard to deal with, you will have to suspend your disbelief with the extra-strong cable re: the number of people in one of the, like, seven indoor airport smoking lounges left in the country. Dulles does have indoor smoking lounges (and there is one, in fact, five gates down from the arrival gate for the LAX-IAD flight I stuck John and Sherlock on), but they are probably not that empty, not on Dec. 21st, not even at seven in the morning. But!! I'm wearing my I Do What I Want shirt today, so. *hands*


	24. 17: Forgiveness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (16th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1090117) | [Harry (15th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1087946) | [Irene (12th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1075059) ]

_17 December 2012, 10:26 pm_   
_London, UK_

Irene doesn't ever come to her, of course; the person on the side of the door with the chain on it has all the power so of course Harry's always the one ringing the bell. Harry will ring the bell and Irene will let her in, often half-dressed but never ever off-guard, and they'll fuck and Harry will yell and Irene will cross her legs and sip her tea and raise an eyebrow and Harry will leave. Then she'll swear to herself she's finished, but she won't be; she'll come back again, of course, in ten days or seven or three, because Harry's stupid enough to get hung up on the way Irene laughs during terrible films and the creamy little dips at the backs of her knees.

Harry rubs at her face and rings the bell.

It's a cheap flat but it has a solid door; that doesn't stop Harry from imagining that she can hear Irene sitting up on the sofa, drawing her ratty blue dressing gown tight around her waist, from thinking she can hear Irene's feet on the floor. The chain rattles, and the door opens; and Irene's hair is frizzy and her eyes are soft with sleep; and there's her ubiquitous dressing gown, with the hole in the pocket over her left thigh; and Harry kisses her in lieu of a profound and inexcusable desire to punch her in the face.

Irene drags Harry in by the placket and Harry kicks off her shoes; Irene shoves the door shut and hooks her leg around Harry's waist. Harry pushes Irene's dressing gown open and finds she isn't wearing anything else. Irene is hot all over. Harry lets Irene shove off her coat and fumble her cuffs open while she presses Irene up against the back of the sofa, kissing her throat, rubbing her thumbs over Irene's narrow, arched ribs.

Irene is irritatingly flexible and prone to false-echoing breathy gasps, at first, but Harry pushes her thigh between Irene's and presses hard against her, harder, harder, until Irene's careful pornstar noises break in two. "Ah—" she cries, so Harry pulls her hair and _pushes_ , and Irene digs her new neatly trimmed nails—she's so fucking _predictable_ —into Harry's bared left shoulder as she grinds against Harry's wool trousers, groaning, "That, _there_ ," low and inelegant, thighs tightening, so Harry rubs and rubs and rubs as Irene's breathing stutters to a low, stretched-out whine in the back of her throat, then starts up again. Harry bites Irene's jaw and drags her down onto the floor.

Irene pushes Harry over onto her back. Irene looks disastrous: hair a tangled and frizzing corona; a bright hot flush all over her face, running down in splotches over the wide stripe of neck and small breasts and flat belly visible beneath her open dressing gown. Irene yanks at the zip on Harry's trousers and sticks her hands in Harry's knickers, inelegant desperation shiny and red all over her face. Harry lifts her hips so Irene can drag the trousers off and shove her face in Harry's crotch, breath hot through Harry's knickers. Harry grabs Irene's hair and pulls. Irene moans. She yanks Harry's knickers down to her knees and pushes three fingers inside her, rubbing her musky-sweaty face into Harry's ribs, then eeling up for a sweet, slow kiss.

Harry feels like she ought to keep her mind in one place, but can't; she's angry, she's absolutely furious, but Irene's tongue slips against hers, mouth slippery and soft, knuckles spreading Harry wide enough for the very tip of a thumb. Harry comes in long, hot, drowning waves, over and over, and Irene pushes herself up onto shaking knees, kicking Harry's thigh up to make room for her own. Harry grabs Irene's other leg and drags it up over her belly, arching her body into Irene's body as Irene drops back onto her elbows with one of those ugly, unplanned noises; Harry grits her teeth in fierce, hot triumph and fucks Irene's cunt and thigh and cunt, thumb tucked into the sweat-slippery crease under Irene's knee. Harry comes again too fast, too hard; Irene half-screams and holds her down to finish; Harry, breathless, knows she ought to object, but doesn't. When Irene finally clenches down—eyes shut, gasping, bright red to her knees—Harry arches up and squeezes Irene's nipple, and Irene makes a noise that's the better half of sobbing, and Harry pushes her off of her and onto the floor.

It takes them both a while to catch their breath.

"At a certain point you either have to stop pretending you're not going to come around again," Irene says, finally, "or actually not come around again."

Harry's knickers are still caught on her left ankle, over her badly rumpled and sinking black sock. Harry lifts her hips to pull them back up, then pushes up to sitting. "You're awfully confident." She laughs meanly. "I'm not like my brother, you know."

Irene looks up at her. "Thank God."

"I mean," Harry says, "I don't have it in me to follow anyone around like a dog," and stands. She's not sure what happened to her shirt.

Irene sits up and folds her dressing gown back over her breasts, fastening the tie. "I think I find that statement insulting," she muses.

Harry looks at her, and Irene looks back, eyes wide and blue.

"I didn't ask you to," Irene clarifies.

Harry snorts. There, in the corner.

"We could, of course, continue to have fights about things we don't actually disagree on," Irene says, perfectly pleasant. "But I'm not certain you'll really enjoy that. When I fight, I tend to win."

Harry curls her lip. "Oh, fuck off," she says, and bends to grab her shirt.

Irene pushes up to her feet. "I didn't know who you were," she says, "so I came around; and then I did know but I didn't think I should hold it against you, so I came around again."

"Oversimplification." Harry clears her hair from her collar and starts buttoning her shirt.

"I find your skepticism a little bit tiring," Irene says, and Harry shakes her head.

"I mostly believe you," she grinds out. "Still angry."

"Oh, that's." Irene _tsk_ s. "Dull."

Harry presses her mouth flat and grabs her trousers. She has to sit to pull them on, which she hates. It's very difficult to keep up a good head of steam while sitting on someone's sofa in your knickers. "Well," she says, feeling suddenly ridiculous, "I'm sorry I'm insufficiently entertaining."

"Oh, stop it, Harry." Irene sighs. "I've less than no interest in screwing a schoolgirl; I did plenty of that when I actually was one."

Harry runs her fingers through her hair and presses up to her feet, standing to do up her zip. It'd be a statement that she'd find easier to address if she didn't suspect it was somewhat justified.

"Holmes has been all over me," she says, finally, instead of an apology.

Irene's brow furrows, and Harry waves a hand.

"Not that one," she says. "Mycroft. His brother."

"Oh, yes," Irene says, edged. "We've met, once or twice."

Harry is quiet for a minute. "Apparently," she says, and stops. She laughs and shakes her head. "Apparently he thinks John's about to propose, or something." She takes a breath. "Which is a laugh." She shakes her head again. "Watsons don't exactly tend to be the type."

"But of course," Irene murmurs. "You're not like your brother."

Harry shrugs one shoulder up, then down. "Youthful mistakes aside," she says, then toes on her shoes, grabs for her coat.

"Harry," Irene says. Harry pauses, hand on the chain. Irene crosses one ankle over the other, rolling up onto the ball of her foot. "I don't want you to follow me around like a dog," she says, flat.

Harry doesn't move. "You lie for a living," she says.

Irene doesn't even blink. "So do you."

Harry presses her lips together. "Fair enough," she says, and drops her hand. She leans her back against the door.

Irene tilts her head. "If you want to come around," she says. "I don't mind."

Harry crosses her arms. "You, too." It comes out harsh. Harry didn't mean it to sound quite so aggressive.

"All right," Irene says softly.

Harry nods. "What are you doing at Christmas?" she asks.

Irene smiles. "Crime," she says. "You?"

Harry watches Irene's face. "John's coming home, so I have plans to avoid him extensively," she says, and Irene laughs. Harry licks her lips. "Do you have family?"

Irene is quiet for a minute. "Yeah," she says finally. "But not locally."

Harry nods. "Going to visit?"

Irene shakes her head. "I can't," she says.

"Bad blood?" Harry asks.

"Warrants, actually," Irene corrects, sounding embarrassed, and Harry laughs.

"Well," she says, and clears her throat. "You could always come over. After the crime, I mean." She shrugs. "If you wanted."

"Right." Irene clears her throat. "I might be late."

Harry nods. "That's all right," she says.

[ **Next** : [Day (18th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1061786) | [Harry (25th - 1:48 pm)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#harry) | [Irene (25th - 9:45 pm)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#irene) ]

 


	25. 25: Merrymaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera. I should also probably mention that there are two really, really tiny Easter eggs (...sock presents?) in this chapter, should you happen to care to look for them.
> 
> To those of you who celebrate it: Merry Christmas! Just barely!!

[ **Previous** : [Day (24th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1067377) ]

_25 December 2012_

[ **Previous** : [John (23rd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1080365) | [Sherlock (24th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1067377) ]

_12:37 am_   
_London, UK_

John sits at the table in his boxers and undershirt with his laptop and a cup of tea. He can't get to sleep. He tried; it didn't work; he got up. So. Instead, he sits, surrounded by boxes, and tries to put together something like a report, and waits. His phone has been silent for almost two hours.

When he hears the door open downstairs, he closes his computer. Sherlock is coming up the stairs at about two-thirds his normal speed. John turns when Sherlock pushes open the door. Sherlock looks... exhausted.

"All right?" John asks.

Sherlock exhales, his shoulders slipping down. "I missed you," he says, then sets his laptop case on the coffee table and hangs up his coat. "We should move the beds," he says. He drops his jacket on the floor and rolls up his sleeves.

John looks at Sherlock's face. John hears his own usual chorus of sensible objections regarding the hour and Mrs. Hudson and the general (in)appropriateness of moving furniture in the middle of the night on Christmas morning, and says none of them. Sherlock looks tense and unhappy and older than he is, for once. His face is very nearly grey.

"All right," John says, instead. "It'll take a bit of shuffling."

It does take a bit of shuffling. They end up putting John's tiny desk upside-down on the sofa, just to get it out of the way, and the bookcase in the entryway downstairs, then flipping John's mattress up against the wall and wrestling his bedframe up behind it to have enough room—though not by much—to get Sherlock's up. Sherlock's bed is heavy and solid. John hates moving furniture.

"We're getting rid of some of these boxes," John grunts, as they wrestle the mattress towards the stairs, "before we try to get mine down, right?"

"Yes," Sherlock agrees, voice tight. "Tomorrow."

John nods.

When they get Sherlock's mattress laid out flat over the frame, Sherlock immediately lies down on top of it, with his feet hanging off the side, and pulls John down by his undershirt. John stretches out on his stomach with his feet hanging next to Sherlock's; he'd stuffed on his shoes without socks, not much fancying moving furniture barefoot.

"I'm sure I saw the box with your sheets downstairs," John says, petting Sherlock's sweaty fringe off his forehead.

"Please don't go," Sherlock says, flat, and John exhales and rubs his thumb over Sherlock's cheek.

"What is it?" John asks.

Sherlock's fingers tighten on John's undershirt. "Moran propositioned me," he explains.

John sighs. "You all right?" he asks.

"Nothing happened," Sherlock says.

"I know," John says, quiet. "Are you all right?"

Sherlock closes his eyes. "Can—can we just, can't we just sleep?"

John presses his face against Sherlock's shoulder. "Yeah," he says. "Take off your shoes, all right?" He kicks off his own and pushes up and off the bed.

"John," Sherlock says.

"I'm just getting the duvet," John says, dragging it over from where they'd piled it on top of Sherlock's suitcase. "Take off your shoes."

Sherlock takes off his shoes.

[ **Next** : John (6:20 am) | Sherlock (6:20 am) ]

 

[ **Previous** : [Mike (20th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1072889) | [Norah (20th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1072889) ]

_4:43 am_   
_London, UK_

Mike feels her before he hears her, a warm spot of pressure through his pajama sleeve that turns into, " _Daddy_ ," in a whispering hiss, that turns into Bess's little hand on his arm.

"Hullo," Mike says, thick. Bess's hair is a dark, chaotic blur around her face. He fumbles for his glasses and checks her feet—two slippers, present and accounted for—then back up. "Can't sleep?"

"It's Christmas," Bess says, then adds, "It's morning," which is less believable, so Mike turns and squints at the clock and _Jesus Christ_.

"No, my love, that's—that's not morning." He closes his eyes again. "It's not morning until it starts with a seven."

"Daddy," she says, more insistently, so he lifts up the blanket.

"Up you go," he says, without opening his eyes. "Come on, then, if you won't go back to bed. You can wake us up when it starts with a seven." She huffs, but she climbs up over him, putting her not insignificant weight on his thigh and stomach before wriggling down between him and Norah.

"Mm." Norah shifts, tucking an arm around Bess. Norah mumbles, "There's an elf in our bed, Mike."

Bess giggles.

"I told her it was Christmas when it started with a seven," he says, pulling his glasses off and putting them back on the bedside table. He rolls over to face them.

"Eight, isn't it?" she says, sleepy, and Bess squeaks.

"Is it?" Mike asks. "Could be eight."

"No, seven," Bess says, laughing.

"Oh, fine, seven," Mike says, and kisses the crown of her head.

When he looks back up, Norah is watching him, eyes half-open, dim in the barely-there light from the streetlights and the nightlight in the hall. Her mouth is curved up.

"Seven," she murmurs. "That's right."

Mike smiles back at her and closes his eyes.

[ **Next** : Mike (8:08 pm) | Norah (8:08 pm) ]

 

[ **Previous** : John (12:37 am) | Sherlock (12:37 am) ]

_6:20 am_   
_London, UK_

Sherlock wakes too early and immediately forces himself still. He's tucked around John's back with an arm around John's waist; he doesn't want to wake him—but John is breathing quietly but neither shallow nor slow; he's not asleep. Sherlock licks his lips. He's still dressed, his clothes crumpled and smelly and too hot. He doesn't want to pull back. He presses his knee to the back of John's knee instead, and John squeezes his wrist.

"It's really early," John whispers. "Go back to sleep."

"Can't." Sherlock nudges his leg in between John's thighs and John sighs and drapes his leg back over Sherlock's. John's boxers slide up as he shifts. His legs are hairy and warm. Sherlock wants to rub his face all over him. "How long have you been up?"

"A while," John admits, so Sherlock sticks his hand down John's pants. It'll be bad, Sherlock knows—neither of them has had a solid night's sleep in days—but they haven't had orgasms adjacently in even longer and it'll probably make them both feel better. He strokes John all the way hard and then twists over for—damn it.

"Where did the lube end up?" Sherlock asks.

"Um—close your eyes." John sits up and turns on the light and Sherlock flinches and buries his face in John's hip. "Shit," John sighs. "I've no fucking idea. What did we do with the bedside table?"

"I think we may have put it in the wardrobe," Sherlock admits. Then he rolls half into John's lap and kisses the head of his cock, licks it— "Lie back," he says, and John sighs and eases himself clumsily back down against the pillows. It takes ages and makes Sherlock's jaw ache but John pets Sherlock's hair and rubs at Sherlock's stretched lips and doesn't try to pull back or redirect Sherlock and then comes in Sherlock's mouth and Sherlock's heart slams against his ribs, painful with gratitude. He can't stop shaking. He presses up onto his knees and brushes his nose over John's nose.

John hums, wrapping an arm around him. "Have you swallowed?" he asks, and Sherlock shakes his head, and John whispers, "yeah, I want," and presses his mouth against Sherlock's mouth. Sherlock lets John lick his lips open, lets John slide his tongue into his mouth, awkward and salty, John dripping slick and warm down onto Sherlock's chin. Sherlock feels helpless, but John is holding him up, and John knows him, John knows almost everything about him. John kisses him and kisses him and then licks his face clean, and then John unfastens Sherlock's trousers and pulls his cock free and does the exact same thing to him.

Sherlock presses his face to John's face, his hand on John's throat. He kisses John again, and again, and again. He can't really taste himself anymore, which is a little disappointing, but John is still basically in his lap, which isn't. Sherlock feels dazed, half-drunk. John unbuttons Sherlock's shirt and pushes it off his shoulders. Sherlock rubs his hands up John's sides, pushing up his undershirt, and John yanks it up over his head and Sherlock shivers. Neither of them possibly has it in them to get hard again, but Sherlock still wants to be touching him all over. John kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him, then presses his forehead to Sherlock's forehead and wipes his thumb over Sherlock's still-sticky cheek. Sherlock sighs and turns his head and sucks on John's thumb.

"Sherlock," John whispers, and Sherlock closes his eyes.

"Don't make me stop," he whispers, and licks down onto John's hand.

"I don't want to," John says, very quietly. "I'm not going to."

Sherlock breathes out, breathes in deep, and kisses the center of John's palm.

"I love it," John whispers, and presses his first two fingers into Sherlock's mouth. "I love it when my cells touch your cells. I want all of you inside all of me."

[ **Next** : John (12:02 pm) | Sherlock (12:02 pm) ]

 

[ **Previous** : [Mycroft (16th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1090117) ]

_9:18 am_   
_London, UK_

Mycroft likes to cook, but he very rarely has time to do it. He generally takes the opportunity on Christmas, though, to spend some time justifying the existence of his rather spacious and well-appointed kitchen; by directing one of his legions of more undertrained and still-useless staff to procure food for it at the weekend, while Mycroft himself was still having migraine-inducing meetings with his Macedonian counterpart, he's saved the really tedious parts and left alone with his quiet mountain of vegetables. He peels aubergines, slices courgettes, chops and sautés onions[;](http://anonym.to?http://cooking.knopfdoubleday.com/2009/08/03/julia-childs-ratatouille-recipe/) and, in between, takes unhurried sips of his third cup of tea.

While it's simmering, he makes his very few necessary personal calls. Sherlock's, of course, goes to voicemail. Mycroft invites him and John for Boxing Day dinner, and leaves it at that; he knows that Sherlock won't call him back, though it's possible that John might; for Sherlock's part, if he turns up at all, it'll be twenty minutes late and with no warning, and he'll refuse to take off his coat. Mycroft does his best to put it out of his mind, and turns off the hob. He removes and hangs his apron, then checks his suit. He thinks he got a spot on his trousers, at first, but it brushes off.

He checks his watch. It's early, yet. He has several hours before he needs to leave. It leaves him feeling slightly at sea.

It's grey out. Not the proper sort of weather to tend his roses. Besides, then he'd have to change.

He could read a book, he supposes. He represses a small, illicit shiver.

He could read a novel, and not talk to anyone, for a while.

[ **Next** : Mycroft (1:48 pm) ]

 

[ **Previous** : [Greg (22nd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1070318) | [Molly (14th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1084942) ]

_10:34 am_   
_London, UK_

At eight, Molly had put her chin on his collarbone and said, _I want bacon_ , which had ended with him fucking her against the kitchen counter by nine; they never did get around to the bacon but Greg's hardly about to complain. He scrubs her back in the shower and then takes her back to bed.

He doesn't know why he was worried about this Christmas, really. It's fine. It reminds him of being twenty and invincible, twenty-five and in love, thirty and newly married, listening to jazz with Vanessa in his lap, her eyes half-closed, drawing paths on his ribs with the ends of her long hair.

"This is nice," Greg says, nuzzling her belly.

Molly hums and scratches at his scalp. It makes him feel sleepy. "We were going to make breakfast," she mumbles, and then yawns, so he yawns, as she pushes herself up onto her elbows to grab her mobile off her bedside table. "Um. Two hours ago."

He laughs and presses himself up over her, kisses her throat. "We could make breakfast," he agrees, slipping his hand down between her thighs, easing his thigh behind it. "Or."

She smacks his wrist, pink-flushed, laughing, and pushes him over onto his back. "You are," she says, but her mobile buzzes on the bedside table, and her face screws up, indecisive.

He raises an eyebrow at her, but it buzzes again, and she shakes her head, laughing, and twists to get it. "I'm not going to—oh, yours." She hands it to him—Max. Greg pushes up to sitting and drags the blanket over his lap.

"Max?" he says. "I was going to—are you already finished with—"

"Dad?" Max says. He sounds damp and shaky and very, very young.

Greg's already on his feet. "What's wrong?" He pulls his pants on, half-hopping, then grabs his trousers. "Where are you?"

Max's breath catches in his throat. "I'm at your flat," he says. "You're not home."

"No, I'll be there in just a minute, just let me—I'll have to find a cab." He points, then holds out his hand and Molly twists to pass him his wallet, her eyes wide. "Can you get Mrs. Baxter downstairs to let you inside? Is she in?"

"I don't know," Max says.

"Ring the bell," Greg says. "Don't hang up. I have to put the phone down for just a second, don't hang up." He sets his mobile down and yanks on his vest and shirt, does up three buttons and leans over to kiss Molly's forehead. "I'm sorry," he whispers, and she nods, whispering, "Go on," so he grabs his phone and his coat and says, "Max, are you still there?" as he dashes down towards the street.

[ **Next** : Greg (7:04 pm) | Molly (7:04 pm) ]

 

[ **Previous** : John (6:20 am) | Sherlock (6:20 am) ]

_12:02 pm_   
_London, UK_

"Knife," Sherlock says.

John passes over Sherlock's utility knife (open, but handle first), and Sherlock slices open another box, which is labeled, _Miscellaneous_. About three-quarters of the boxes are labeled, _Miscellaneous_ , in Mycroft's professional movers' neat block printing. John's is labeled, _Books (Miscellaneous)_. They've been doing this for hours—"We ought to clear a path" somehow turning into "Let's unpack everything we own;" which is not entirely not John's fault—and so far mostly what they have is an enormous mess, but John keeps telling himself that moving is always like this. He's sure it's true for most people; it's just that on his own, he has a lot less stuff.

"It's starting to look better," Sherlock says tiredly.

"Yeah," John agrees, and rocks back on his heels, checking his watch. Christ. John started while Sherlock was still showering, before Sherlock came down at half seven with two scraps of toilet paper pressed to nicks on his chin and his hair dripping down into his collar; John can't decide if he can't believe it's already past noon, or if he can't believe it's only noon. He feels like he's been unpacking boxes labeled _Miscellaneous_ since the dawn of time. "We should probably take a break," John says. "Have something to eat."

"I wouldn't mind another cup of coffee," Sherlock admits.

"America isn't a good influence on you," John says, getting awkwardly up to his feet. "Christ." He stretches out his back, feeling his vertebrae crack one at a time; _relief_.

"Ow." Sherlock grimaces, one knee up. "Give me a hand?" John lends him a hand and Sherlock pushes up unsteadily, then shakes out his legs.

"Your knee again?" John watches him, intent.

Sherlock shakes his head. "Not pulled—it's just... bruised, a bit. Has our carpet always been terrible?"

"Well, it's not the softest spot in the flat," John concedes, heading into the kitchen. "I bought more eggs, if—"

"You aren't upset about Moran," Sherlock says, a bit fast.

John can feel himself freeze up, but he can't seem to do anything to stop it.

Sherlock looks at him, then up at the ceiling for inspiration, then back down at John. "Yes, I will make us an omelette," Sherlock says, rather mechanically, "but." He takes a deep breath. "You weren't upset about Moran."

John licks his lips. "Define 'upset', please," he says.

Sherlock waves a hand and goes over to the fridge. "You weren't angry," he says.

 _Danger, danger_ , John thinks, as he digs around in the leftmost box of _Kitchen (Miscellaneous)_ and pulls out the frying pan that he always (mostly) managed to keep reserved from experiments. "I would be angry with her," he says, very carefully, "if she... pushed you, or—"

"She was perfectly polite about it," Sherlock says, thumping the egg carton out onto the work surface with unnecessary vigor. _He_ sounds angry. John digs out a bowl, and, when Sherlock tosses the spinach out of the fridge, John finds a knife, too. "She didn't—she put her hand on my arm and asked me if she could kiss me and I told her no and she took her hand back and then wished me a happy Christmas." His voice is thick with loathing.

"Right." John nods. "Should I be angry with her?"

"Nothing happened, I—she didn't do anything," Sherlock says, and then, " _I'm_ angry with her," and then sighs and ducks his head, gripping the edge of the work surface. "She knows I'm—I just don't know why she was even asking in the first place."

John almost, but not quite, wants to smile. "Well," he says tiredly. "She has good taste."

"She can't possibly want," Sherlock says, and then stops, breathing out through his teeth, shoulders tense.

"You." John pauses, thinking. Finally, he says, "Attraction doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not we're together, you know," and Sherlock bristles, and John rubs his face, saying, "Sorry, that—that sounded a lot less patronizing in my head. I—Christ." He sighs and spoons coffee into the French press.

Sherlock starts cracking eggs into the bowl. "I know you're trying to not be patronizing," he says, after a minute.

John shakes his head. "I'm just hoping to avoid being a bastard," he says. "And then. I end up being a bastard, so." He laughs.

"I think that goes both ways," Sherlock says. "I—John." He stops again.

John doesn't say anything. He's halfway worried about breathing.

"I was—confused," Sherlock says, "when she." He stops, and John's skin crawls for no reason. No reason. "I mean, it didn't ever come up, did it," Sherlock says, unsteady.

"What?" John asks.

Sherlock takes a breath. "I know you would never cheat on me," he says. "I do know that."

"I," John says, and then stops. His heart is pounding. He breathes out.

"I mean, you'd have to choose to do it, and you wouldn't," Sherlock says, and cracks his neck. "You only ever hurt me by accident."

John closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. He nods and nods.

"But sometimes I hurt you on purpose," Sherlock says, very quietly.

John shakes his head, hard. "Not in that way," he says. "Not like that." He swallows. "Christ, Sherlock. I—I have _never_ been worried about that." The coffee. He turns the lid on the French press and wills his hands not to shake as he pours it out.

After a minute, Sherlock says, "I'm attracted to her," very quietly, and reaches for the spinach.

"Yeah," John says, and then snaps his jaw shut.

Sherlock nods. "You knew I was attracted to her," he says.

John clears his throat. "I had a pretty good idea, yeah," he says.

Sherlock nods. "Since?" he asks.

John shrugs one shoulder. "Chicago?" he says. "Chicago, probably."

"Right," Sherlock says. He chops the spinach in silence. John spoons two teaspoons of sugar into Sherlock's coffee and stirs. "Because," Sherlock says, "I didn't."

John puts his hand on Sherlock's back, then drops it again.

"You're not upset," Sherlock says quietly.

John sighs. "No, because I don't think you're going to actually fuck her," he says, and then laughs, raw. Sherlock looks pale. "Christ." John sighs again. "I—there's a world of difference between wanting it and doing it." He brushes his palm up Sherlock's forearm, tugs Sherlock over by his rolled-up sleeve. John kisses Sherlock's cheek, wrapping his arm around Sherlock's waist, and Sherlock sighs, bends down to give John an awkward, angular kiss.

John nods. He says, "Everyone on the planet wants people they aren't with. Which you already know, but."

Sherlock is quiet for a minute before saying, "It was different, when—when I. When I had a single choice, and I'd made it."

"Yeah," John says, and turns his face in towards Sherlock's neck. "I know. It's okay."

[ **Next** : John (5:53 pm) | Sherlock (5:53 pm) ]

 

[ **Previous** : [Mrs. Hudson (23rd)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1080365) ]

_12:56 pm_   
_London, UK_

When Paulina calls, Jane turns the hob down and sits, massages her own hands, stretches her wrists.

"And how is Barcelona?" Jane asks.

"It's beautiful," Paulina says. "Not as warm as I'd like, but a great deal better than London."

"I'd be very disappointed if it weren't," Jane says. "My radiator's had a case of indigestion since October—"

Paulina snorts, then laughs, braying and inelegant. Jane smiles to herself.

"I'm looking forward to it," Jane admits. "I love London, I really do, but sometimes I'd give my right arm for a proper day of sunshine, I really would."

Paulina laughs at her. "A bit excessive, don't you think?" she says.

"Not at all," Jane says. "My right arm and a toe or two, maybe."

"But you hated Florida," Paulina reminds her.

"Yes, but that was when I lived there." Jane sighs. "It's different when you don't think that you're going home."

Paulina hums. "I don't know," she says, "I rather like the idea that I might not go home."

Jane rests her chin on her hand. "I've never understood how you can possibly hate a place so much," she says, very quietly.

"Well, I'm certainly not going to waste time being nostalgic about it," Paulina says, with some asperity. Then she sighs. "It's not—Jane. It's stuck. It's only one place. I like the possibility that goes along with just planning to be _elsewhere_."

When they were girls, Paulina had teased her, but often not to much effect. When Jane was nine, Paulina had told her that there were pockets of quicksand all along the way to the school, and Jane had believed her, but it hadn't frightened her particularly. _The more you struggle, the more you sink_ , Paulina had said, _and then you'll never get free and you'll be sucked down and you'll suffocate and die_ , but upon hearing this explanation, Jane hadn't been able to understand why anyone would bother to struggle in the first place. Surely you could just move slowly, and carefully, and step free.

"Ah, well," Jane says, straightening. "I'll be there on the 28th. That's soon enough to see each other, I think."

"Never," Paulina tells her, and Jane smiles, feeling warm to her toes.

[ **Next** : Mrs. Hudson (5:53 pm) ]

 

[ **Previous** : [Harry (17th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1094752) | Mycroft (9:18 am) ]

_1:48 pm_   
_London, UK_

Harry isn't expecting Irene for hours, so the doorbell, when it rings, surprises her a bit. She checks the peephole and then rocks back down onto her heels, frowning.

She isn't entirely sure why she opens the door.

"Hullo," she says, wary.

"Happy Christmas," Mycroft says. He then proceeds to show her a great number of his teeth; it takes her a while to realize it's intended as a smile.

"You brought..." She eyes him. "You know, I am perfectly capable of feeding myself."

"It's ratatouille," Mycroft says, lifting it up. "It's rather nice, I think, and as we have both been abandoned by our blood relations for—" he curls his lip— "other activities, I thought I might stop by, to see if you had any plans for the day."

She leans her weight against the jamb. "Are you hitting on me?" she asks.

He looks startled. "I—no," he says. "I... well, I think that family is important."

It's a lie, but very smoothly told. He thinks that Sherlock is important. She thinks that Sherlock is a berk. She takes a certain vicious sort of satisfaction in having been able to startle Mycroft, just as she's always enjoyed Sherlock's blatant disapproval; Mycroft looks like he's expecting a fight, too: dressed in the sort of muted dove greys that echo the browns that John likes when he's trying to pretend to be unobtrusive, with his hair curling untidily at the back and his eyes falsely wide.

"I suppose you can come in," she says. She refuses to give him the satisfaction. "I don't have plans until later," she explains, turning back towards the kitchen. "And I only know how to cook for four, so I was expecting leftovers. There should be plenty. Tea?"

He hesitates in her doorway.

"Close the door, would you?" she calls out, pulling down another mug. "You're letting out all the heat."

[ **Next** : Harry (9:45 pm) | Mycroft (9:45 pm) ]

 

[ **Previous** : ['Anthea' (16th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1090117) ]

_3:11 pm_   
_Los Angeles, CA_

"Oh!" She tucks Mycroft's text back into her pocket and steps back, trying and failing to rebalance her cup. "I—damn, I'm sorry, that's—"

"It's fine, it's fine," he says, laughing as she tries to mop iced espresso off his table before it drips down onto his leg, which is in an enormous cast and stretched out on a chair. At least she knows why she tripped. "That's—iced, really? It's December."

"This is more like a balmy summer's day to me," she says, and looks up at his face, then looks back down at his chest, then back up at his face because it's safer. "I'm so sorry about your leg, did I—"

"No, no, you're fine," he says cheerfully. "I'm on about ten tons of Vicodin; if I'd known how well it worked I would've started using the cast to trip attractive women earlier." He holds out his hand. "Peter."

"Oh—nice to meet you." She shifts her cup to her other hand so she can shake his. "Sorry, I'm still a bit... damp. I'd better get another serviette. And... another coffee."

He laughs. He has dimples. "Yeah," he says. "And then." He stretches out and pulls a third chair over to his table. "You could come back."

"I," she says, but even Mycroft's work tends to slow down a bit around Christmas; half her local contacts are off having normal Christmas dinners and giving their mums meteorologically unnecessary scarves, leaving her with a day with very little to do but drive around in a rented Prius looking for a cup of coffee and finding, apparently, an opportunity—why not?—to chat up good-looking American men. "All right," she says and grabs him another wad of serviettes before going up to reorder her coffee.

When she comes back, he's got a little mountain of wet paper by his elbow and he's taken off his glasses and stacked them on top of his copy of _A Visit From the Goon Squad_ , which is resting on top of his closed iPad. His shirt is new, expensive, and plaid. He's two-thirds unfortunate, but he is also very, very good-looking. She wonders what he can do with his hands. She tucks her straw into her mouth, thoughtful.

"So," he says, resting his hands on the table. "You didn't mention your name."

"Ah," she says. "My apologies. I'm Joy." She holds out her hand again, and when he shakes it, he rubs his thumb over her palm, and she smiles.

 

[ **Previous** : Mrs. Hudson (12:56 pm) | John (12:02 pm) | Sherlock (12:02 pm) ]

_5:53 pm_   
_London, UK_

Mrs. Hudson wants him to play, of course; she always does, at Christmas. He admits, "My violin is still packed," and she tuts, then stands.

"Of course it isn't," she says, setting her wine on the coffee table. "Mycroft knows better than to leave an instrument in an unoccupied flat. It's in my linen cupboard."

Sherlock turns towards John, and John smiles at him, cheeks pink. John's been drinking. Sherlock's been drinking a little bit, too. After unpacking boxes all day and a hair-too-hot shower, his muscles feel strangely liquid. His glass is almost empty, so he finishes it.

"It's probably dreadfully out of tune, of course," Mrs. Hudson says, coming back in and handing over the case before perching on the edge of her chair.

Sherlock attempts to gather his knees in to make room and nods. "Well, I'm dreadfully out of practice," he says. He sets the case on the coffee table and touches the handle, then pops the clasps open and breathes in. It smells right, so he takes out his bow and his rosin.

He can't quite meet their eyes while he tunes. Beside him, John tips back the last of his wine and stands. "More?" he asks, reaching for Mrs. Hudson's glass.

"Oh, thank you, love." She hands it over, and John tucks it between the fingers of his right hand. His left brushes over Sherlock's shoulder and takes Sherlock's glass, too, on his way to the kitchen.

Sherlock swallows and checks his tuning. Again, and again. He bows—E, B, G# in single long whole notes—then takes a breath and starts over[.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dUKYvoqEqA) When he drops the violin to his lap, Mrs. Hudson is smiling at him. He feels flushed.

He clears his throat. "Out of practice," he says. "I wanted to warm up."

"Lovely," she says, and he plucks out the first few notes of the Menuet I, then stops.

"Well," he says. "Requests?" He lifts it up to his chin and plays "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," then begins the Coventry Carol but Mrs. Hudson doesn't sing, not even off-key, so he stops.

He lowers his violin to his lap. "Thank you," he says, very softly.

"Of course," she says.

Sherlock nods. John is taking a transparently long time with the wine.

"You were moving furniture," she says. "In the night."

He can feel his face heating up.

"Oh, don't be like that," she says, and leans over to pat his knee. "You'd have to do a lot more than that to shock me, my love."

He looks up at her ceiling.

"I'm glad, you know," she says, and his gaze snaps back to her face.

"That we were moving furniture at one in the morning?" he asks, eyebrow raised.

"That you have someone," she says, and he takes a deep breath. She says, "Ah," and leans over, and pats his knee again. "Even better," she says, very quietly, "that it's him."

He swallows and bows his head.

"Now," she says, leaning back. "Play 'Away in a Manger,' I know all the words to that one."

[ **Next** : John (11:36 pm) | Sherlock (11:36 pm) ]

 

[ **Previous** : [Tina (24th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1067377) ]

_6:39 pm_   
_London, UK_

Tina hasn't made it home for Christmas dinner in a few years—she was on holiday in Bali with Meg and Natalie last year, and the year before that, she got caught up by an unexpected underground drug war and missed her flight back to London—but she hasn't forgotten how lovely it can be. It's a good group, this year: her and her parents; two very old family friends and their grown son; her paternal uncle, who has always been eccentric but terribly interesting; and the widow who just moved in to the house next door. Tina's mum got her a new jumper: cashmere, red and black; Christmassy without being absurd, both very warm and very soft; and Tina keeps not quite managing to stop herself from rubbing her cheek on the sleeve.

"Tina," Mrs. Beaumont, the new neighbor, is saying over her wine. "It's just wonderful to finally meet you. Your mother talks about you constantly, and you are every bit as lovely as she's made you sound."

Tina laughs. "Well, she's my mum," she demurs. "I don't know that you should trust everything she says."

"Oh, don't be silly." Mrs. Beaumont beams. "She told us you were in IT?"

"Ah—not quite." Tina smiles at her, feeling fond. Mrs. Beaumont reminds her a lot of David Deacon-Blythe's mum, from when they were little; Mrs. Deacon-Blythe had been stout and cheerful and had always given Tina sweets because Tina's mum didn't believe in refined sugar for children and Tina had tended to get a bit tragic about it. "I'm the head of public relations for a technology company," Tina explains to Mrs. Beaumont, "but I do very little direct work with the engineers, these days." She laughs, so Mrs. Beaumont laughs, too.

"That sounds tremendously interesting," Mrs. Beaumont says, which is kind of her. "What sort of technology does your company make?"

"Oh," Tina says, smiling. "Any number of things, really, but we specialize in data mining and analytics."

"Oh, _I_ see," Mrs. Beaumont says, eyes crinkling up. "I've heard about you people on the news, you know. Targeted advertising and all that."

Tina can feel her cheeks getting pink.

Mrs. Beaumont leans in and drops her voice. "I hear," she says, very confidentially, "that you're taking over the world."

"Well," Tina says, "not yet."

Mrs. Beaumont laughs, so Tina laughs, too.

 

[ **Previous** : Greg (10:34 am) | Molly (10:34 am) ]

_7:04 pm_   
_London, UK_

Just before one, Greg had texted her to let her know that it might be an hour or two before he could get Max home and come back; Molly could read his anxiety and distraction just fine, but beyond "child-related crisis" she didn't have the first idea what was going on. She also, embarrassingly enough, didn't particularly care. There've been three more texts since: one at three-thirty apologizing for the delay and promising a quick return; another at five, saying he was just about to leave his ex-wife's house; and this one, just now, telling her that something had come up and he probably wouldn't be back in time to eat.

It wasn't exactly a surprise. She'd already had the last of her curry from Friday, two mandarin oranges, a Hobnob, and a glass of wine; when her mobile finally buzzed to confirm her suspicions, she'd gone and refilled her glass and made toast, still a bit peckish but not really interested in cooking properly on her own.

He will come back, she knows; he'll come back late and apologize and tell her just enough to sketch the shape of his family crisis in skeleton form, and then they'll both gladly let it go. He'd had his kids on Saturday for some sort of outing, she knows; he'd turned up on Sunday tired and looking for distraction, which she had been perfectly happy to provide. It's not the only gap between them, but it's the biggest. She knows they can't go on like this forever. He knows that his kids already have a mum, and she knows that she hasn't much interest in being one; at a certain point he'll start to feel the edges of what he's missing, and go looking for it somewhere else. It's a strange thought. She feels like it ought to hurt her feelings, but it doesn't. It's fun enough to be worth it as long as it lasts, and she likes him—but not enough, she thinks, to find it particularly painful.

After a moment, she pulls her laptop out from under the sofa and loads up _Downton Abbey_. She pulls her feet up onto her sofa and rests her chin on her knees, dragging her throw blanket around her shoulders. She's half asleep the next time her phone buzzes.

 _Sorry_ , Greg says. _Just got away. Should I come back?_

She stretches and pushes up to her feet. She doesn't check the clock. It's not like it'd change her answer.

 _Of course_ , she says. _But not for long... I've got plans tomorrow, and it's getting late._

 

[ **Previous** : Mike (4:43 am) | Norah (4:43 am) ]

_8:08 pm_   
_London, UK_

After dinner at her mum's—huge, crowded, and _loud_ —Norah volunteers them for the washing up. She intends it as an escape for Mike, in part; having Norah's brothers down with their families—a total of seven adults, with five children underfoot—is enough to make Norah feel a bit faint, and Mike is improving, but by increments. Crowds are often still a bit more than he can take. Mike seems better, in the kitchen. In the other room, Norah's mum is playing with the littler kids, a little louder than Norah would like. Frank is sitting in their dad's old chair with their mum's cat draped all over his knees, looking halfway to purring himself, and Cassie is on the sofa cooing over Marianne and Tim's baby, while Marianne sits beside them with her cheek in her hand and her eyes closed. Tim is teaching Katie how to use her new chess set.

"That was a good idea," she says, as Mike passes her another plate. "The chess set."

"Yeah," he says.

She towels it off. "You could play with her, if you wanted."

"Tim's teaching her," Mike says.

She sets the plate on top of the stack and says nothing.

"It's nice for her," Mike says. "They don't see them often, you know."

Norah knows. Bess is thrilled to have cousins, but that batch of nieces and nephews are all very nearly the same age. Katie is the oldest of all of Norah's mum's grandkids; she hasn't much use for three more versions of her kid sister, and finds Frank, as she told Norah a year ago, _off-putting_. Norah had said, _Well, your uncle Frank has always been a bit of a heel_ , while thinking, _Oh, God, she's going to study English, isn't she_.

Norah nods. "Later, then."

Mike hands her another plate. "She seems like she's having a good time."

"Mike," she says, setting the plate down. "I know you play chess. You tried to use it as a seduction technique."

Mike scrubs at a streak of potato in silence.

"You were so good with Bess this morning," she says. Her throat hurts. "You can't—I know, I know this is hard, I know that—that sometimes you get... distraught, over the girls, but—"

Mike clatters the plate into the sink. "I'm not well," he says.

"I know," she says. She feels like laughing.

"Not yet," he says.

"I know," she repeats, turning towards him. She leans her hip against the edge of the sink. "I don't need you to be. Not yet."

He ducks his head.

"I just need you to do what you can," she says, very quietly. "And—and you do, you do _with me_ , but. With them." She takes a breath. "They're not going to get this time back, _Katie's_ not going to get this time back. If you—if you can, if you can do _anything_ —"

"All right," Mike says, sharp, and then, soft, "All right."

Norah takes a breath and turns, picking up the plate again.

"After this," he says. "All right?"

"Yes," she says, polishing the rim and setting it on top of the others. "Thank you."

He's quiet for a long, long moment. "I love you," he says, finally. "I love _them_. It's just that sometimes."

He stops. "It's hard," he says.

She nods. "I know."

She holds out her hand, and he passes her another plate.

 

[ **Previous** : Harry (1:48 pm) | [Irene (17th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1094752) | Mycroft (1:48 pm) ]

_9:45 pm_   
_London, UK_

Irene knocks twice and the door opens, and then she's facing a loosened tie and an unbuttoned waistcoat and also Mycroft Holmes, and her adrenal glands slam into action. Her heart is racing and she's sweating and her mouth tastes weird and Harry is pulling the door open the rest of the way, still giggling, with her cheeks pink and a spoon in her mouth.

"Nhr!" Harry's eyes widen, then crinkle up, and she pops the spoon out. "Irene! I didn't expect you so early! Come in—Mycroft, bugger off."

"Your wish, my dear," he says, bowing, and she gives him a two fingered salute as he smirks at her and buttons himself back up again. "Thank you for dinner," he says, sliding on his jacket. "Miss Adler." He reaches out for his idiotic umbrella, and tucks an empty dish up under his arm, and leaves.

Harry pushes the door shut, and Irene blinks and blinks.

"You invited Mycroft Holmes over for Christmas dinner?" Irene asks. She considers herself to be perfectly at home with the surreal, but that might be a little too far.

"Mycroft Holmes invited Mycroft Holmes over for Christmas dinner," Harry corrects, smiling. "Hi."

"Um." Irene shakes the buzzing out of her ears. "Hi."

"I missed you," Harry says, "a bit."

"Oh, a bit," Irene says, eyebrows raised, and Harry laughs.

"Yeah, a bit." She holds out a hand. "Take off your coat," she says. "Come in."

Irene reaches back behind herself to bolt the door.

[ **Next** : [Harry (26th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1100641) ]

 

[ **Previous** : John (5:53 pm) | Sherlock (5:53 pm) ]

_11:36 pm_   
_London, UK_

"God." John rubs at his face and stumbles into the kitchen to turn on the kettle. "How can a woman that tiny drink that much?"

"Hollow leg," Sherlock says, in that unnaturally crisp way he gets when he's worried he's drunk too much. "Metaphorically speaking."

John can feel himself smiling. It feels strange. "Tea?" He takes two cups off the draining board. He's too drunk to sleep.

"Please." Sherlock leans his face against the doorjamb and sighs. "We still have to move your bed." He sighs again. "Your old—the small, terrible bed."

"We could do it tomorrow," John suggests, then sighs. "Oh, no. Damn. Harry's coming over for lunch."

"Mm." Sherlock rubs his cheek against the shoulder of his jacket. "Goody."

John laughs. "Shut up," he says, and Sherlock turns to smile at him.

"Come on." Sherlock pushes off the wall. "Move furniture with me, then we can—we can spend the morning having acrobatic sex and." He pauses. "Sleeping," he finishes. "That—I don't think that ought to sound quite so nice," he says, rather wistful.

"Sounds like a proper Christmas to me," John says, as the kettle clicks. He fills up their cups, then licks his lips. "I'd like you to have lunch with us," John says. It feels weirdly formal. He scratches at his eyebrow. "I mean."

Sherlock is watching him.

"We could probably get the bedframe down, at least, while that's brewing," John says, instead.

Sherlock straightens up slowly. "All right," he says, and John nods and pushes past him and over towards the stairs.

John's old bed is far less cumbersome than Sherlock's: not heavy at all, just a little awkward. He takes the top end and Sherlock the bottom, to minimize any height-related difficulty on the stairs.

"Left foot, box," John warns him, when Sherlock's nearing the bottom of the stairs, and Sherlock glances over his shoulder to maneuver around the last of their stacked boxes of _Miscellaneous_ and towards Sherlock's old room. They settle the bedframe with its side flush against the wall. The room looks huge, with Sherlock's big bed upstairs.

"So," Sherlock says, staring at the bedframe. "Lunch with Harry."

"You don't have to," John says. "But, well." He takes a breath. "If we _are_ going to get married."

Sherlock meets his eyes. "Boxing Day with the in-laws," he says. He sounds a little uncertain.

"Yeah, I guess." John presses his shoulderblades together and cracks his neck. "For what it's worth, I think that at that point you're fairly obligated to hate her."

Sherlock snorts and ducks his head, then looks up, smiling. "Mattress," he says.

"Yeah." John exhales, and follows Sherlock up the stairs.

Getting the mattress down is more bother than the frame, but still easier than it was going the other direction. Nothing in the world is as difficult to shift as Sherlock's bedframe.

"Do they count as in-laws, do you think," Sherlock says, as they shuffle the mattress through the kitchen, "even if there's nothing—oh, elbow," as John barks his elbow on the table, hard.

The mattress hits his foot, which doesn't hurt. " _Christ_." John takes a deep breath, blinking.

"All right?" Sherlock says, lowering his end.

"Yeah," John says. Fucking hell. He takes another breath and flexes his elbow out, then grabs hold of the mattress. "Up again?"

Sherlock nods and they hoist it the rest of the way into the bedroom, tossing it onto the frame.

"Well," John says. He sits down on the edge of the bed to survey the room. It's nice. Sherlock sits next to him.

"Bit like a sofa," Sherlock observes. "Or—if we put the pillows against the wall."

"A bit, yeah." John wrinkles his nose up and relaxes it and then leans his shoulder into Sherlock's. "So, this is. What? The office, now?"

"You mean," Sherlock says, and then stops.

John waves a hand. "I can't keep thinking of it as your bedroom," he explains, "so."

"Oh," Sherlock says, then nods. "Right, no."

John nods, and Sherlock sighs and ducks his face down to kiss John's shoulder. John laughs.

"What?" Sherlock rests his nose against John's cheek, and John leans towards him, then shakes his head. Sherlock rests his cheek against John's shoulder.

"Nothing," John says. "Just. We could go upstairs, since we've moved the beds and all. And yet, here we are."

Sherlock nods. "John," he says, very quietly.

"Yeah?" John turns, presses his mouth into Sherlock's hair.

"Not my area of expertise, but. Somewhere in there." Sherlock pauses. "Did you agree to marry me?"

Right. John rubs at his eyebrow. "You know I'm." He clears his throat. "A bit at sea, on that."

Sherlock doesn't say anything. After a minute he sighs and straightens up. "Yeah," he says quietly.

John shakes his head. "I worry about it," he says.

"Yes," Sherlock says.

"I don't have a good track record with." John clears his throat. "Relationships."

Sherlock makes a small, amused noise, and John laughs. "Fine. I don't have a good track record, _either_. Better?"

Sherlock is quiet. His body is warm, seeping into John's shoulder.

"Exactly how many times," Sherlock says, "do you expect to—um." He sighs, then says, "A lifelong relationship isn't really something you can get right more than once."

"No," John agrees. "I know. But when you have the, you know, the other sort a largish number of times, it gets." He leans his weight on his elbows on his knees. "Harder. I mean, to—to believe that you're sure that you know when you think it actually is, you know, forever." He takes a breath. "Just, speaking scientifically."

Sherlock's quiet. "So," he says. He's looking rather intently at the baseboards.

"Yeah," John says. He nods, and rubs his palms on his trousers. "The problem is."

After a minute, Sherlock says, "The problem."

"Right." John rubs at his eyebrow. "It's just, it's been awful," he says, clumsily. "Between us, I mean," he says. "We've been—we've been fighting for a week and it's been awful and I still want to marry you." He clears his throat. "Which seems. Important."

"Oh," Sherlock says.

"I mean." John laughs, rubs at his thighs, rubs at his face. "I told—that, this—this tiny adolescent girl who was advising me about, about fucking _sexual safety_ , I told her—I told her we were getting married, we've been talking about it since—you've been certain since—since fucking _Dubai_ , we've been—when you fight with me you fight." John takes a breath. "Claws out."

Sherlock leans back, stretching his legs out. "You don't exactly pull your punches yourself," he says.

John shakes his head. "No," he says, very quietly. "I don't."

Sherlock sighs and looks over at the window.

"All right." John takes a deep breath. "I can't. At a certain point we have to—cards on the table, all right?"

"Please," Sherlock says, quiet.

John nods, sharp. "Almost no one who's sure they want to marry someone after two weeks turns out to be right, which worries me," he says, ticking it off on his fingers. "Almost no one sticks with their second sexual partner, which worries me. A year ago I would've sworn up and down I was dead straight, which worries me. I've never made it to eight months with anyone, which worries me. I still have a hard time not lying to you when I'm afraid, which worries me. I keep feeling like I need to protect you, which really ought to worry _you_ —"

"It does," Sherlock says, and John stops, shaking his head.

"Which are—none of that is stupid, but I still want to marry you," John says. "We fight—we fight and leave marks." He takes a deep, deep breath. "And in. In the worst of it. When it's the hardest, I still want to marry you." He sighs. "I don't trust myself. But that seems like it's important."

Sherlock is still beside him.

"I mean," John says, very quietly, "do you even want, what? Kids? Pets? Retirement to Tahiti? I feel like—if the options are working it out or not being with you, I know what I choose, I—I can't stand—" He stops, and laughs, and shakes his head. "You're my fucking life's work no matter what I do, so—"

Sherlock lifts his chin and says, "No, negotiable, and not further than two hours by train."

John blinks. "What?"

"London," Sherlock says. "I hate being away; everywhere else is dreadful." He takes a deep breath. "Not further than two hours by train. Retirement, I mean."

John swallows. "That's not exactly what I meant."

"It's part of what you meant," Sherlock says. He takes another breath. "If you asked me to, I would go upstairs this moment and get the rings. Do you want kids? I don't think I'd do at all well with children."

"No," John says. "I mean—yeah, no, I mean no." He takes a deep breath. "I don't particularly want kids." His heart is pounding.

Sherlock nods.

"Right," John says.

Sherlock's hand brushes up John's back. John presses their shoulders together, tight, and turns his head to press his mouth against Sherlock's cheek.

Sherlock breathes in. "I want to," he says, very quietly.

John nods. Sherlock's voice is heavy. It always has been, about this. A lot of the time, John finds it hard to hear.

"I want to be married to you," Sherlock says. "I want you to be married to me."

It doesn't sound simple, when he puts it like that.

John rubs his nose over Sherlock's cheekbone, then pulls back, sitting up straight. He keeps his arm pressed to Sherlock's. Sherlock is warm to his fingers where they are touching John's back. Sherlock is breathing almost the way he does when he is asleep. John is exhausted, too. When it's like this between them John always feels as though his skin has been left porous, as though Sherlock could stick his hands directly inside him and root around.

John doesn't mind.

"Yeah," John says, and takes a breath. "All right."

[ **Next** : [Day (26th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1100641) | [Sherlock (26th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1100641) ]

 


	26. 26: Home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please see [Chapter 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1037830) for notes, warning info, acknowledgements, et cetera.

[ **Previous** : [Day (25th)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974) | [Harry (25th - 9:45 pm)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#irene) | [Sherlock (25th - 11:36 pm)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/578410/chapters/1096974#john3) ]

_26 December 2012, 1:29 pm_   
_London, UK_

Sherlock has a lot to say to Harry Watson, but in deference to—to any number of things, really, he opens the door and restricts himself to, "You're late."

"Well, you're an ass; we're both disappointed." She pushes past him, shrugging off her coat. "Is John upstairs?"

"No," Sherlock says, and smiles. "You're _very_ late. He had to..." He hesitates. "Run an errand," he decides, finally. It's not any of her business, and John probably wouldn't appreciate Harry being any more aware of their professional activities than she absolutely needs to be. "He'll be back soon," Sherlock says. "In the meantime—" he gestures her towards the stairs— "I have been directed to offer you tea and biscuits, and not cause you any lasting physical or psychological damage."

She's not moving. She's looking at his hand.

"Though actually," Sherlock says, "I'm merely extrapolating, as to the psychological damage." He feels awkward under her attention, but he refuses to give in. He smoothes the front of his jacket down instead.

She looks up at his face, then turns, making a low, furious noise, and stomps up the stairs. Sherlock rubs his thumb over the base of his ring, then follows her. He makes a fresh pot of tea in silence. The biscuits are already on the coffee table. She sits in his chair, which is both blatant and childish, so he puts too much milk in her cup and then brings it over.

"Tea," he says.

"You make a _lovely_ housewife," she says sweetly, and takes it.

"That's nothing at all to how I look in an apron," he says, and she makes a disgusted noise while he wonders what he _would_ look like in an apron, and whether or not John would think it was funny. Mycroft has an apron; maybe Sherlock will steal it and find out.

"So, what, then?" she nods at his ring. "Adding dress-up to your little game of house? I'd always thought it was all spy games and blindfolds, but what do I know."

He takes his cup over to John's chair and sits. "You're very interested in your brother's sex life," he says pleasantly. "And it really isn't any of your business." He can smell Shalimar and Molton Brown Cloudberry shampoo over Harry's perpetual fake gardenias; he smiles. "You seem to have forgiven Irene."

She clanks her cup down into its saucer. "Speaking of things that aren't anyone's business," she says, and he sits back in his chair, feeling pleased.

"And how was your Christmas?" he asks.

"Fine," she says, and then her eyes go sharp and her smile sharper. "Your brother made ratatouille. Very tasty."

Sherlock takes a sip of tea and then sets his cup down on the side table. "I'd be careful, if I were you; my brother is a congenital Lothario."

"I'm immune," she says.

"Are you certain?" he asks. "He would just _love_ to be able to say he'd converted a lesbian," he says, which is true, then adds, "he'd tell all his friends," which—since Mycroft doesn't have any friends—isn't false. He picks up his cup again.

"All right," she says pleasantly. "If we're not going to end up in a fistfight before John gets back, you'd better stop talking."

Sherlock raises an eyebrow and sips his tea. Harry takes a biscuit and eats it in six tiny, tidy bites, and watches him like she's looking for an opportunity to draw a weapon. He can hardly avoid observing her, but it's a very strange experience: _thirty-four days_ , John had said, fifteen days ago, and then rested his head on Sherlock's shoulder; Sherlock had twisted down and kissed him until John could ignore the fact that he cared for a while. Harry has started biting her nails again, and gone back to using Golden Light Blonde instead of Golden Ash Blonde when coloring her hair; she hasn't been drinking, but it still sets off alarm bells. It's not that she's anything like his problem; she isn't. But John is.

Sherlock sets his cup down in its saucer. "You know, you always make the decision," he says.

"I told you not to talk," she says.

"What a pity," he says, "that I'm ignoring you."

She bares her teeth.

"It is always you, you know," he repeats. His knee jiggles and he forces it still; John's idiotic tics are catching. "He can't decide for you. Clara can't decide for you. Irene can't—wouldn't, either."

She leans back, exhaling. "Oh, you—" She laughs. "What is this, addict kinship hour? I don't care how fucking brilliant you are; we aren't friends."

He stretches his legs out, flexing his feet in his shoes. "Do you really think he's going to leave you to your own devices?"

Her jaw clenches.

"Not built for estrangement, the Watsons, are you." He curls his lip. "You two would rather beat each other's hearts black and blue at Christmas and birthdays than admit that you don't like each other, so you fight dirty and loathe each other for three weeks a month and yet you still came for him in June, just like he'll always be the one to turn up every time you need wringing out, because _that's just what families do_." It feels crisp and false on his tongue.

She says, "He's my brother."

"I know," he says, hand clenching. "I've got one, too." He opens his fist to pick up his cup.

She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. "What's your point?"

"He's your brother," Sherlock says, tensing again.

"Yes, well done," she says.

"It's your decision," he says. He forces his fingers to loosen, not without difficulty. "It's always your decision. You can ask for help, and get help, or ignore help and pretend you don't need it, but in the end it's always your decision. You have to make it over and over and over again, and it's always still your decision." He takes a breath. "And whatever you choose, we both know what he'll do."

Her eyes widen fractionally, and she breathes, "I can't believe you."

"Oh, you should." He doesn't smile.

"You want to, what? Pretend I'm the only person with free will in our family?" She laughs, shaking her head. "He's not an automaton. He's made just as many bad choices as I have; his just seem to have fewer consequences."

He straightens. "I find your total inability to see reality a little worrying," he tells her.

"You haven't got the first fucking clue about my life," Harry snaps. "You and he, you live in a bubble, and you act like all the other lives on the planet only exist when they happen to bump up against yours."

"Yes," Sherlock snaps, "a condition unique to us, of course," trying to force the muscles in his chest to relax while she is raising her voice and saying, "Besides, it's a bit rich, don't you think? Coming from you?"

Sherlock doesn't say anything and she smiles like she's winning.

"Seeing as how you're reaping the rewards of statistics, and all that," she adds. "Our dad drank too, you know."

Sherlock holds perfectly still. He takes a breath, then lets it out, mouth open, so it doesn't make a sound. "Yes," he says. "I know."

"Someone like you," she says, "as crammed full of facts as you've managed to make yourself, I imagine you know the odds."

It sounds like she's aiming for a sneer. She doesn't quite hit it.

"Yes," Sherlock says, very steadily. "I do."

Harry sips her tea. She taps her trimmed nails against the side of her cup.

"It has come up," Sherlock says, very quietly. "If that's what you're asking." That conversation had been awful, too.

She meets his eyes.

"I am making my decision, every day," he says. Then he gathers up the bits of himself that John knows better and says, "I wouldn't cheat on him, either."

She sets her cup down in its saucer with a clack. "Not," she says, "the same thing."

"No," he agrees. He takes a breath and looks her straight in the eye. "Terrifying, isn't it?"

She doesn't say anything.

"You do terrible things to him," he says. "I've never been sure if you care."

She lifts her chin. "You know, _terrible things siblings do to each other_ goes both ways."

"Yes," Sherlock agrees. "But I don't care about you."

She laughs at that. He curls his toes in his shoes. She leans back in her chair.

"Christ, you're a bastard." She sounds a little admiring. She shakes her head and sips her tea. "You two deserve each other."

Sherlock hears—he straightens in his seat, and Harry raises an eyebrow, just before they both hear John's key in the lock downstairs. Sherlock stands up so he can pour out a third cup of tea. Harry watches Sherlock in silence. Loads of milk, no sugar. When he straightens up again she doesn't say anything, and Sherlock feels, for no reason, pleased.

"I always did suspect I wouldn't think much of his first marriage," she says, without inflection.

He looks at her. Her eyes are tired, knuckles white, mouth tense. Her gaze is fierce and blue and bright. She's afraid, he knows. She is afraid that he will hurt John in ways heretofore inconceivable, strange methods of his own wild and unmerciful devising. He will, of course; it's inevitable. It is both her duty and her pleasure to object. Sherlock can hear John coming up the stairs, two at a time. He does that, Sherlock knows, when he's happy.

"So did I," Sherlock says, "for a while."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A possibly helpful contextual note: adult children of alcoholics and other addicts are both at higher risk of addiction themselves, and more likely to become romantically involved with addicts than the population at large. These links may also be of relevance: [1](http://anonym.to?http://alcoholism.about.com/od/adult/a/Common-Traits-Of-Adult-Children-Of-Alcoholics.htm), [2](http://anonym.to?http://www.pa-fsa.org/assets/children_of_addicted_parents.pdf), [3](http://anonym.to?http://www.al-anon.alateen.org/pdf/B3_understand.pdf).)

**Author's Note:**

> First off: thank you to everyone who has read and commented as we've gone along. I very much appreciate it. ♥
> 
> Second (part a): I in general don't respond to comments [short version: I have things that are wrong with my brain, and one of them has to do with my (in)ability to conduct conversations where other people can overhear them or read (overread?) them], unless there's a factual issue in question (e.g. the weather in Sydney on the first weekend in December—yes, I did, in fact, check the weather in Sydney on the first weekend in December). So if you asked me a question about—for example—story interpretation and I didn't reply, it's because I don't generally reply to comments, not because I'm actively ignoring you. I'm a lot better at replying to inquiries I get privately, via [email](mailto:greywash@gmail.com) or [non-anonymous Tumblr ask](http://fizzygins.tumblr.com/ask), though it may take me a few days. The one exception to my "will probably reply in private" rule is with stuff that rubs up against addiction issues, which tend to be hard for me to talk about at the best of times, and "strangers on the internet" do not generally fall into that category. So it's possible that I won't be able to reply to those questions at all, but I will do my best.
> 
> Second (part b): I've gotten a lot of _why_ questions about this story (why I wrote it nonlinearly, why I made certain decisions of characterization, et cetera), and so I do want to re-link to [the [possibly squee-harshing, so be forewarned] meta post I made after I finished "the sensation of falling as you just hit sleep"](http://greywash.dreamwidth.org/16168.html), because I think that may shed light on some of the stuff people have been asking, though you are of course also still welcome to contact me privately with questions. The other thing I want to mention is that I think a lot of people interpret this universe as (a) a romance story [which is not how I think of it _at all_ ], or (b) an action story [which is also not how I think of it _at all_ ]. That doesn't mean it isn't those things; it certainly contains elements of those things, and those elements are deliberate. But I think I basically don't make Decision X that might help me tell a romance story or Decision Y that might help me tell an action story because a lot of the time I'm not exactly trying to do either of those things. **breathedout** wrote me this absolutely wonderful _Spring Fire_ story called "[Atthis, once long ago](http://archiveofourown.org/works/564109)," in the notes of which she very accurately summed up my primary narrative interest as "lies and the liars that tell them". I feel like maybe I should add that to my tags on this one. And...... possibly everything else I have ever written.
> 
> I don't know if any of that actually helps clarify anything, but... I hope so?
> 
> Third: Speaking of **breathedout** , and also **airynothing** , **torakowalski** , and **roane** , I was lucky enough to have an absolutely amazing team of audiencers, betas, and Britpicker on this one, who did absolutely stellar (and fast!) (no seriously, sososo fast!!) work to help me be able to not only get a 35,000 word fic up in under a month during the busiest time of the year for just about everyone, but also, especially in **breathedout** 's case, held my hand through some of the worst writer's block I've ever had in my life. My particular strain of writer's block tends to manifest itself as an inability to make decisions, and **breathedout** has been putting up with me for marathon daily chat sessions where I basically made her do all the hard stuff while I keysmashed incoherently in my Scrivener window. I also would like to thank [The Antidiogenes Club](http://antidiogenes.tumblr.com) for moral support, and also Nic and Olive specifically for helping with emergency London-picking in the very wee hours of their morn while Tora was asleep. Thank you all very, very much. ♥
> 
> Finally: [I did update the series timeline](http://archiveofourown.org/series/15409), which also is where I'm kind of haphazardly keeping track of what's to be written next, if it's of interest to anybody. I'm basically totally unable to estimate how long writing something will take, so pretty much beyond telling you that the fic that takes place in August 2012 is... like... half done? I can pretty much only tell you that it'll get posted when.... it's finished. Sorry. :(


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